Hard to believe, isn't it? With each additional weekend of
avoidable human errors from overtaxed referees, the excuse that goal-line
technology isn't quite ready for the big time only grows that much harder to
swallow.
Babak Rafati is the latest referee made to look foolish by
not having television camera-like vision, in Mainz against Hamburger SV in the
Bundesliga on Sunday. Marcell Jansen's crossbar-rattling volley did not cross
Mainz's line but Rafati still awarded a Hamburg goal. Afterward, the opposing
managers both appealed for electronic goal line monitoring.
“There is no longer a coach who isn't for it,” said Hamburg
coach Armin Veh. “We've already been asking for it for so long, but nothing
happens.” Which is why the advent of machines in football is inevitable. Human
errors become unacceptable and unjustifiable once electronic aids exist that
can avoid mistakes without ruining the flow of a game or stripping the sport of
its human soul. Sports administrators opposed to machines will, like dinosaurs,
die out, because their resistance will be seen as nothing more than nonsensical
pigheadedness. So it was with tennis and cricket, and will be with football.
Electronic aids will be used to better referee matches. The only question is
when not if.
But the suits at world governing body FIFA, perhaps wisely,
are refusing to rush this transition. They must get this great leap forward
absolutely right - because technology cannot be uninvented once it has been
introduced.
Proof of that comes from cycling.
That sport needs more bad publicity like a hole in the head.
It should be focusing its energies on convincing skeptics that not all riders
dope and that those who do have a better than reasonable chance of being caught.
Yet instead - diversionary tactic, perhaps? - cycling's
governing body has triggered an ugly and needless fight about technology,
specifically the radios that riders and their managers have used since the
1990s to talk to each other during races. Stuff like, “I have a puncture,” “Don't
let competitor Z, Y or Z get too far ahead” and “Beware! Slippery, sun-melted
tarmac on the bend ahead!” The UCI believes that its creeping ban on radios
will make races more exciting, because riders will be forced to think more for
themselves, may take more risks and won't get as much help from managers
feeding them tips and tactics.
Maybe. But it seems a bit late to argue that now. To expect
a generation of riders who grew up with radios to do without is like asking
fencers to give up the padded vests and masks that stop them from being
skewered in combat.
Maybe the spectacle would be more gripping but, still, you'd
be mad to make them do without.
When a rider has an accident that he could have been
forewarned about with a radio, then the UCI will lose this battle because it
won't be able to argue convincingly with the majority who will say, “I told you
so.” In the words of German rider Jens Voigt, who has ridden in every Tour de
France since 1998, “If I had a fatal crash, who of you who think the radio ban
is a great idea will go to Berlin and explain to my six children that it was
the right decision and daddy was just an unlucky victim in the so-important
battle for more drama in cycling?” In other words, once introduced, it can be
impossible to uninvent a technology and still remain credible. Swimming's
decision to ban super-fast suits was an obvious exception.
The suits denatured the sport and had to go. Still, even
that example shows that a sport should weigh all the pros and cons of a major
technological advance - which swimming didn't - before adopting it.
For a week in February, FIFA put goal-line technologies from
10 companies through their paces, in day- and nighttime tests at its
headquarters in Switzerland. FIFA says none of them were as quick, as accurate
or as simple as it wants. The Hawk-Eye system used for disputed tennis
line-calls was not trialed in the latest studies. So this weekend, football's
rule-making body extended the tests for another year. That's either good due
diligence or a plodding excess of caution. It is hard to know which because
FIFA has not been particularly open about the testing.
“What is one year? It is nothing. Just a little bit of
patience is needed,” said FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
The need is urgent. It was even before Frank Lampard's
disallowed goal marred Germany-England at the 2010 World Cup. The excuse that
the technology isn't quite up to scratch grows ever more threadbare. Accurately
determining a goal isn't rocket-science. Isn't there an app for that? Not yet,
seemingly, although there must for the 2014 World Cup at the latest. However,
having procrastinated for so long, football can perhaps wait for 12 more months
to ensure that the chosen machine is better than referees.
Otherwise, there's not much point.
