The last thing that world football’s governing body, Fifa, would have wanted was to have controversies shroud its maiden foray into Africa. Instead of the football, the focus increasingly has fallen on the refereeing — and some truly abominable decisions that have been handed out in the runup to the quarter-finals of the 19th World Cup currently under way in South Africa. Such has been the fallout of this poor showing that much of the football itself — which too has not really risen above the ordinary, barring shining exceptions such as Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Germany and Holland — has all but been consigned to the sidelines and a raging debate over the greater use of technology now occupies centrestage the world over. The trigger, of course, was Uruguayan Jorge Larroinda’s negating of what clearly was a valid goal struck by England’s Frank Lampard in the pre-quarter-final against Germany at Bloemfontein, where the ball rocketed into the crossbar and dropped inside the goal before bouncing back out, and the referee waving for play to continue. Lampard’s anguished reaction will remain one of the iconic moments of this World Cup. Adding fuel to the fire was another baffling decision the same night, when the first of three Argentinean strikes against Mexico came from a clearly offside position and referee Roberto Rosetti upheld Carlos Tevez’s claim for the goal. And as if that was not bad enough, Fifa president Sepp Blatter went on record the following morning to say that there was no need for technology to play a larger role, and that mistakes were part and parcel of the game. The indignant howl that followed this forced Blatter to backtrack within 24 hours and admit that mistakes had been made, and that technology would indeed be selectively used in determining some close calls, an issue which would be taken up by the International Football Association Rules Board next month.
In a sense, much of this was unnecessary. Football is governed by 10 fairly straightforward laws, but referees at every level of the game know of an unwritten 11th law, called “common sense”. This is something which the gentlemen in black at the World Cup appear to have forgotten, and have consequently come in for an undue share of attention, both from the media and the administration, and three of them have indeed been sent back home. The best referee is the anonymous one — like Hector Baldassi, in charge of Tuesday’s needle Spain-Portugal Round of 16 match — who keeps the flow of a game going as smoothly as possible and intervening only as and when most necessary. That, sadly, has been more the exception rather than the rule at this World Cup, and the result is the growing clamour for change. Yet Blatter is also right in calling for caution in the use of technology. Static instances like goal-line calls are obvious candidates for referral to a qualified official who has access to television replays. This could either take the form of fixed cameras or micro-chip embedded balls, both of which are tried and successfully implemented technologies. Yet, to extend it to every aspect of the game would not only break the rhythm of a match but could also lead to cynical exploitation to interrupt threatening moves. It is a fine line, but other sports have walked it and come up with solutions unique to their respective situations. With its vast resources and access to the best money can buy, there is no reason to suppose that Fifa cannot do so as well.