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One World Cup and two… more officials - The Europa League trial must have worked then?
Wednesday 02 December 2009
FIFA’s answer to a glaring case of human error? Introduce the possibility of more.
Admittedly, an extra official behind the goal-line would have seen Thierry Henry’s (double) handball in that play-off game, but is employing two more men in each fixture the best way to eliminate the rarest of incidents, like Henry’s handball, or Geoff Hurst’s World Cup final ‘goal’?
Of course it isn’t, but have fun convincing Sepp Blatter his trained decision-makers cannot make the correct one. You need to look no further than Craven Cottage, and UEFA’s Europa League trial, for the evidence that two extra referees’-little-helpers may well not be the answer the FIFA president wants.
One goal-line official in particular stands out from the crowd. He didn’t make John Arne Riise think twice about ‘doing a Lucas’ in the penalty area at Craven Cottage - slowing down to anticipate any touch from Stephen Kelly before falling to the ground. But he did manage to convince the referee it was a different player entirely that made the minimal contact on the Norwegian. Of course, this was not a dive like Eduardo or David Ngog managed to pulled off - and nor is this writer condemning Riise’s decision - but it still did not deter the ex-Liverpool player from pulling the wool over both officials’ eyes by aiming to win a penalty rather than attempting a shot on goal. It took strong protestations from Brede Hangeland to convince the referee he should stay on the field (as he was merely coming across to cover) but, more importantly, if the man behind the goal had realised it was the Irishman’s foul, it was not a red card offence.
Further to this incident, in the same game, Roma were awarded a last-gasp corner after a shot was adjudged to have been deflected over. There was no contact, however, with a white shirt, or leg, or head. The referee missed it - fair enough. But the fifth (or sixth?) official did not correct him, so he must have missed it too. Why, then, was he there if he failed to be an extra pair of eyes and correct the referee’s initial wrong? Perhaps this incident is not enough to condemn the UEFA trial as a failure, but the corner led to the Italian side’s equaliser, and took two points off the Londoners’ total.
In the return leg, Mark Schwarzer did well to tip over a Daniele De Rossi drive for a corner - but then the goalkeeper took it himself, as it was wrongfully awarded a goal-kick. These such incidents happen in every game of football, but if the line-official - who simply must have heard ball graze glove as the Australian used every inch to touch the ball over - cannot help reduce the minor errors, then he does not need to be there for the 90 minutes. Unless, of course, it was the goal-line official’s decision to award the goal-kick, in which case FIFA and UEFA are complicating the simple decisions for the sake of stamping out extraordinary events - in other words, adding more human-error to a game already riddled with it.
Perhaps, then, their purpose is solely to help with dubious goals or penalty decisions, like Henry’s and Eduardo’s respectively, and they cannot overrule a referee’s decision to award a corner? If so, then this writer is fully on the video technology bandwagon, as using a replay for the same incredibly rare incidents would at least rule out the need for two extra spectators, who might well have turned off and made the wrong decision anyway.
The other option is that they are there as a deterrent, but it would be very difficult to judge if extra officials stop players from attempting such outrageous acts of cheating, as they are such infrequent occurrences already. It would take years without such an incident happening and plenty of statisticians to fathom whether assistants five and six stopped player X from tumbling over player Y’s invisible leg, instead of just taking a shot.
By which time, we would probably have 10 officials on the field anyway.
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