To video or not to video?

There is a lot of talk these days on how to deal with helping referees make less errors. There are many things to be said around this subject so this will be quite a long post .

First of all, television coverage and progress in filming have increased tremendously in the past 20 years. I remember that in the 1970s you were lucky if you got to see one or two games per month on TV. And then the cameras were fewer and much more static than they are now not to mention that slow motion was quite rare. That puts much more pressure on referees since millions of viewers can now scrutinize every single decision they make. There is often a big gap between what you see in a stadium and on TV. I happened to be in the Stade de France for the infamous France – Ireland qualifying game for the 2010 World Cup and I can assure you that very few people saw Thierry Henry’s “Hand of God” assist. When we left the stadium hardly anyone was mentioning the incident. My view is that the decision to go for video or other technological tools should in no way be considered because of TV interests and the money that is behind it. The decision should be made on the basis of the game itself and how it will help or hinder it.

How do you practically implement video coverage to assess referee decisions? At what point in time do you use the video? Take the Thierry Henry example again. Proponents of video assistance simply say, you see using the video would have clearly shown the hand and the referee would have canceled the goal. Right, but now imagine that the same video would have shown a split second earlier an Irish player committing a foul on a French player in the penalty area. According to FIFA rules, the referee’s decision is based on the first foul when there is a succession of them. This scenario would have led to a penalty for the French team! What I am trying to get to here is that you can’t use video because football can’t be chopped into sequences. Take another famous example, Geoff Hurst’s blasting shot (see video at the end of this post) on the goal post during the England- Germany 1966 World Cup final in Wembley. The goal was awarded, but here again, what if the video would have spotted an English player committing a foul just before; do you go back the original foul or do you only concentrate on if the ball entirely crossed the goal line? Using video just doesn’t make sense to me because due to the sequence of actions in a game, the decision to use video coverage at a certain point in this sequence is in itself completely subjective.

My last point is linked to the tag line of this blog : “Football is the universal sport because it is the closest to human nature”. This is maybe the most important part in my mind. The history of football is made of mistakes, many of them unfair. Mistakes are part of our human DNA, to try and eradicate them is to convert us into robots. The FIFA Laws of the Game are in many cases dependent on the referee’s appreciation of the action. Take for example Law 11 regarding offside. For an offside to be decided, the referee has to decide whether the player being considered for offside is also involved in active play. My opinion is that it is because football is so much about appreciation that so many of us identify with it. We endlessly discuss with others, blame the referees, the FIFA, the commentators, regarding referee decisions and that is the way it should be! How sad it would be if the clinical coldness of a video would have canceled Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup or Geoff Hurt’s above mentioned shot. These uncertain moments have become legends of the sport and have been told from generation to generation. This is why we are so passionate about football, these discussions are close to our own weaknesses and act as a living mirror. Introducing technology in this human equation will break the game.

That is why I fully support Michel Platini’s plan of reinforcing the human factor by having 2 additional referees – one behind each goal – backing up the existing referee and 2 assistant referees on the sides. It’s no suprise that Platini has had this idea, he is a living example of someone who truly understands football and its human dimension.