Dear M. Blatter,
You are a lucky man, millions, no billions of people cherish the sport you are at the head of. I am part of those, ever since I first went to the Parc des Princes stadium when I was 5 or so. I have cried, laughed, supported, gone wild, criticized, shown compassion, replayed legendary matches in my mind, you name it, all the emotions that football fans undoubtedly go through. You have a dream job M. Blatter.
Recently though I have started to sense that the sport we so enjoy is in danger of becoming forever changed, distorted, destroyed by events that you need to take action against. If you don’t, then I fear that football will become a living nightmare, a sporting equivalent of Blade Runner, an unworthy MMOG.
The most imminent and prominent danger is what I call the demand for instant gratification. We live in an era of the instantaneous. Instant access to information, instant pleasure, instant emotions, instant relief, instant everything…Now you will ask me what does this have to do with football? The fiery debate about the use of video to “help” referees has all to do with the search for instantaneity. The Video God freezes a football action to bring an instant picture of “truth” to the millions, billions of people watching the most popular sport in the world. We want to know the truth and we increasingly rely on machines to hand it to us; right away. Is this the way to go M. Blatter?
Football is a played by humans. With their qualities and shortcomings. That is why this blog has the tagline “Football is the universal sport because it is the closest to human nature.” Some cheat and then geniously make up for it, others have the highest sense of ethics, and the majority just do the best they can. The good and the bad have been part of this sport since its start somewhere in Middle Age Britain unless it was in some Tuscan village. Forwards have scored goals “outside of this world” while others have missed the unthinkable. Defenders have shown incredible bravery while others displayed remarkable actor talents…
The character who orchestrates that this commedia dell’arte is played according to the rules is another human; namely the referee. He is almost alone to do this helped in his task by 2 side line referees. These 3 people have to keep a hawks eye on 22 players, knowing that thousands in the stadium and billions behing their tv sets are ready at any moment to hunt them down as soon as the first blunder materializes. Enters the video. The hunters want to rely on the image freeze magic to instantaneously condemn the man in black. The machine made truth replaces the human factor. Is this the way to go M. Blatter?
M. Blatter, you are probably asking then what is the God sent solution here? Don’t blame the men in black as you did after the Mexican and English events at the World Cup. Reinforce the human factor as Michel Platini advocates by adding more referees – one behind each goal post – so that the men in black become a team in themselves. Football is a collective sport which ironically has less referees than the individual sport tennis is. Help referees by betting that the collective judgement of 5 well trained professionals will make for better human backed decisions; not machine ones please M. Blatter!
Maracanazos will always defend the human factor.
