FIFA’s stubborn stance on technology is 90 years out of date

Seemingly every year another sport adopts some kind of technology to assists match officials make their decisions. An extensive media campaign in the UK seeking use of goal-line technology followed England’s defeat to Germany in the 2010 World Cup.

Frank Lampard’s strike appeared to cross the line which would have made the score 2-2 at half time, but the officials missed it. Technology, it is supposed, would not have. Despite the pressure, FIFA President Sepp Blatter remained firm and only in early March was the issue finally discussed by the upper echelons of the hierarchy of world football.

After years of speculation –debate arose from incidents like Pedro Mendes’ 2005 goal for Tottenham Hotspur against Manchester United – they decided they needed more time to experiment with systems.

The International Cricket Council announced early in March that the referral system had increased the correct decisions made by almost eight percentage points. It had lead to 97.8 per cent correct decisions, up from 90.2 per cent in tournaments prior to the current competition. It was first officially adopted for one-day cricket in 2008 using Hawk-eye technology among others, although that had been around for television purposes and trials since 2001.

However, with teams only allowed two incorrect referrals per innings – but as many correct ones until those two have been used – there is an argument for removing umpires altogether. It is thought relying only on technology and a system free of grey areas will always lead to a correct decision. The same can be said of tennis as well, which has used Hawk-eye officially since 2006.

The success of Hawk-eye, its uptake by the world’s major sporting competitions, encouraged Sony to buy the company that produces Hawk-eye early in March. It will be one of the new systems that FIFA will investigate before reaching a decision early in 2011.

The issue that players, fans and administrators continually cite is that it ruins the atmosphere of the game, undermining its intensity. It can slow the game down; spectators and players must wait for videos to be repeatedly viewed in slow motion from multiple angles. Often the right call takes two or three minutes to come through.

Instant replays in sports have been around for about fifty years, as soon as it became possible to review recorded material and re-broadcast it almost immediately after the incident. In American football the instant replay has been used by officials since 1999 to make the correct call and managers have the right to call for it when they feel the initial decision was wrong. For controversial try-scoring decisions in rugby, referees routinely ‘go upstairs’ to the ‘television match official’ of their own accord (since 2002), so as not to make the wrong on-field call.

Recently field hockey adopted video replays, with some sports correspondents eager to show one-upmanship over football in this regard.

Photo-finishes were first used to decide places in a whole host of fast-paced, tight finish sports like horse and greyhound racing, athletics, rowing and cycling in 1932. The benefits of the photo-finish were felt by Francis Obikwelu when he pipped Dwain Chambers to the European Indoor 60m title at the start of March by a fraction of a second; an interval that otherwise would not have been picked up by the naked eye.

Athletics also adopted the false-start motion sensors in 1984. Swimming competitions use touch-pad technology (since 1956, adopted completely in 1980) to stop the clocks in each lane, requiring a specific type of finish in some disciplines to record the time.

The case for technology in football

Football is the world’s biggest sport; the sums of money surrounding the game are enormous in comparison to any other sport, and some nation’s economies. Leaving the pressure of making the correct decision every time on the shoulders of only three, or in some cases five, officials seems unnecessary given the technology available.

In the World Cup last year FIFA heads were embarrassed when the South African administrators who controlled the televisions screens at the stadia played instant replays, at times undermining the referee’s decision. Most infamous was the instance in the quarter final between Mexico and Argentina.

Football does, to some extent, use video technology to make certain decisions. League officials scrutinise recordings to see off-the-ball decisions that may have initially been missed by the match referees. But the game’s reluctance to use technology to make in-game decisions appears to be losing support.

The limits of technology in other sports

Baseball, in America, now uses video technology, but only to review home run decisions (since 2008). That was of no relief to Armando Galarrga who, last year, was on course to pitch only the 19^th perfect game in 110 years of Major League history only for the on-field call to ruin his chances, even though the runner was out by at least two feet.

In ice hockey there are goal-judges who sound a horn when a goal is scored, similar to the types of officials that FIFA have brought in for some competitions. Ice hockey goal-judges existed from around 1877, getting their buzzers and lights to signal the goals in 1917: that’s over 90 years ago, 134 years if going back to the originals. Yet football is only now considering the changes to its laws. However, the goal-judges were not free of bias or notable inaccuracies prior to the incorporation standardised video technology throughout ice hockey leagues.

Where possible technology is less likely to make errors than people, hence how widespread its use has become in the last decade. Although there is not a call from fans, pundits, players or officials to review every decision made in the sports, ensuring that the key ones are made correctly is the least that could be expected in this technology-driven era.

Images from Patriceneff and DarrenM540, graphic author’s own