237 replies to this topic

[shawnrbu]

England,

We know how you feel.

Sincerely,
USA Fans

Except this was 100% conclusive. No grey area whatsoever.

[Drocca]

Sucks. I know I'm a stupid American but it sucks they can't review THAT.

[fletcherpost]

Nice chants of "the referees a wanker"

[Jed Zeppelin]

I hope, if only for the sake of the sport, that this game is not decided by that play.

[ifmanis5]

If this ends 2-1 the British Tabs will have a field day.

[fletcherpost]

Sucks. I know I'm a stupid American but it sucks they can't review THAT.

FIFA have said no goalline technology. They have the money, the technology exists but FIFA are stupid. Everybody's stupid.

[Infield Infidel]

As a USA fan, it is nice to see some clinical finishing for once

[Apisith]

The Germans waited 44 years for that. It has been an awesome match thus far.

[johnmd20]

If this ends 2-1 the British Tabs will have a field day.

No matter the result, they should have a field day.

[Ahriman]

Hasn't this ref sent off someone in 70% of his international matches called? Out of the realm to think a German might get a shaky red in the 2nd half?

[johnmd20]

FIFA have said no goalline technology. They have the money, the technology exists but FIFA are stupid. Everybody's stupid.

It really hurts the credibility of the sport that clear goals aren't counted. I understand some say the controversy is good for the sport, but I don't get it. There is nothing good about scoring a legit goal and it not counting. That is back breaking.

[Drocca]

FIFA have said no goalline technology. They have the money, the technology exists but FIFA are stupid. Everybody's stupid.

I'm watching on the Spanish channel and they just showed a replay of the non-goal 44 years ago. Strikingly similar. God, apparently, is not stupid. She has a sense of humor.

[Spacemans Bong]

The germans have waited 44 years for that.

In a pub at the mo, the irony of a wembley-tor against England seems lost on the crowd..

[Kremlin Watcher]

I repeat, a joke. It was three balls over the line. Not even a question. How can you miss that?

The only way you can miss it is if you already know the outcome and the goal doesn't match that planed outcome. It's fixed.

[johnmd20]

She has a sense of humor.

She's just a stranger on the bus, trying to make her way home.

[ifmanis5]

FIFA have said no goalline technology. They have the money, the technology exists but FIFA are stupid. Everybody's stupid.

Yup. The NFL has the same attitude. Putting a chip in the ball and sensors on the sideline ends many of their problems but they refuse to do it.

[P'tucket, rhymes with...]

FIFA have said no goalline technology. They have the money, the technology exists but FIFA are stupid. Everybody's stupid.

Have they stated a rationale for that decision beyond a desire to keep the game in the 19th century and leaving themselves open to accusations of fixing the tourney?

[Nick Kaufman]

The Germans waited 44 years for that. It has been an awesome match thus far.

But really out of nowhere. England are shit, then in the span of two min, they score two...

[Jody Reeds Well]

Why can't they put a chip in the ball for when it goes through the goal an indicator goes off? That was an awful call

[Infield Infidel]

The FIFA must get some sick, sadistic fetish out of perfectly good goals being nullified or denied. And they wonder why scoring is down

Also, no one in the stadium will see the review. They didn't show the review of Edu's non-goal in-stadium either

[Ahriman]

Who knows, maybe FIFA will come around. They finally had to admit that this WC ball is absolute garbage, bouncing all over the place and sailing on everyone.

Ah, who am I kidding...

[Maalox]

The FIFA must get some sick, sadistic fetish out of perfectly good goals being nullified or denied. And they wonder why scoring is down

Also, no one in the stadium will see the review. They didn't show the review of Edu's non-goal in-stadium either

I wonder how many people in the stadium would need to see a replay. That was obvious live.

[fletcherpost]

Have they stated a rationale for that decision beyond a desire to keep the game in the 19th century and leaving themselves open to accusations of fixing the tourney?

Ossie might be able to shed some light on the mindset of Sepp Blatter the top man of FIFA. Thing is all the players and managers and fans want goal line technology. No one cares that it might take a few seconds out of the game.

[DLew On Roids]

When will Nils show up, remind us that he played at a fairly high level, and explain that we're all a bunch of stupid Yanks for thinking the officials are dickweeds for missing that call?

[Maalox]

The only way you can miss it is if you already know the outcome and the goal doesn't match that planed outcome. It's fixed.

If FIFA was fixing the World Cup, England is not the team it'd be screwing in Round 2. If this was a fix, England would be knocked out in the semis or finals and we'd be hearing about the Curse of Jackie Charlton.

[Spacemans Bong]

I'm convinced Blatter is a technophobe, because the rationale is that Fifa do not want to introduce technology in order to keep a link between the highest level and the amateur game, which is absurd when you consider that adidas wanks on about how hi-tech their shitty beachball is and the boots cost hundreds of dollars.

[cjdmadcow]

Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke on 6 March:

"The door is closed. The decision was not to use technology at all."

[RedSoxandBlueStripes]

Jesus Christ, it hit the netting in the roof of the goal. It was more obvious than a 6'4 drag queen with hairy hands.

[URI]

When will Nils show up, remind us that he played at a fairly high level, and explain that we're all a bunch of stupid Yanks for thinking the officials are dickweeds for missing that call?

Are you saying that Bocanegra was the linesman who missed that goal? That's a dubious claim.

[Apisith]

That was really unforgivable by the linesman. I'm pretty sure we're going to get goal-line technology now, whether that's in the form of a microchip or a 'hawkeye' system; both have been tested and proved to be right 99.999% of the time so it's just a matter of picking one method over another and implementing it.

[Maalox]

Ossie might be able to shed some light on the mindset of Sepp Blatter the top man of FIFA. Thing is all the players and managers and fans want goal line technology. No one cares that it might take a few seconds out of the game.

From Wiki:

In the early 1970s, Blatter was elected president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders, an organisation who[sic] tried to stop women replacing suspender belts with pantyhose.

Sounds like he's anti-technology - but in a good way.

[P'tucket, rhymes with...]

I'm convinced Blatter is a technophobe, because the rationale is that Fifa do not want to introduce technology in order to keep a link between the highest level and the amateur game, which is absurd when you consider that adidas wanks on about how hi-tech their shitty beachball is and the boots cost hundreds of dollars.

They make the governing bodies in golf look like cutting edge visionaries.

[Ahriman]

Cards out early. A German is gonna go for sure.

[Maalox]

I'm starting to think the equation for England is pretty simple. When they play aggressively, they play well. When they stifle themselves and play not to lose, they play like crap.

[RedSoxandBlueStripes]

There'd better be the mother of all makeup calls coming.

[Nick Kaufman]

If you have a memory longer than a goldfish you probably remember that, earlier in March, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) decided against the use of goal-line technology by referees to determine what exactly just happened on the field. This technology – which could theoretically have eliminated Thierry Henry’s handball, numerous penalty area dives, and most fractionally offside calls – was deemed by FIFA to be too cumbersome for use. What’s more, they didn’t just decide to stop using it now; they closed the door and decided to keep the game of football just the way it was. There was much hand-wringing, much aggravation, and then a couple of days later it was all over with…

…until today, when FIFA president Sepp Blatter decided to re-open the whole can of worms.

This is kind of an about-face for Blatter, who defended the decision a few days after it had been made. His original concerns were the concerns that always pop up: that the rhythm of the game would be disrupted, that the measure would prove too costly to introduce, and that you’d create different rules for lower leagues (that couldn’t afford the technology) than you had for higher leagues (that could).

Today, in an interview with CNN, Blatter got right down to business and changed his mind restated his opinion for the sake of clarity, saying now that he’d be in favor of goal line technology if it were “accurate and non-complicated”:

“If we have an absolute and accurate, non-complicated system then I would be in favor. But the current systems [on offer], with all respect to the companies [who have developed them], are complicated and not 100 percent accurate.”

The two systems he’s referring to are the Adidas “Cairo” system (aka “just put a chip in the ball”) and the “Hawkeye” system (aka “just put camera on the goal line”). It’s true that both of them have issues; what’s not true is how problematic those issues are.

All told, Blatter may have a point in regards to the Cairo system. Per Blatter, here are the issues:

“Speaking about the chip in the ball, which is the most accurate and I can say it works, but it is so complicated. The chip in the ball will create many problems with all manufacturers of the balls.

“[It] is an Adidas system and other manufacturers [need] to have the same rights to have access to this — this is a fundamental problem.

“You cannot use radio waves [to track the ball] because these are interrupted by circumstances, so you have to wire the whole field of play and I think this is too complicated.”

Right off the bat, there’s a real issue here that FIFA can’t just finesse around: if Adidas owns the system, Adidas is under no obligation to share that system with, say, Nike (who manufactures the balls for the Premier League and La Liga, amongst others). Adidas would probably allow Nike to use said technology, but they wouldn’t do that for free; that licensing price would instead be spread out over every ball that Nike sold, which would make the cost of running leagues that much more expensive.

As far as the radio wave thing, he’s probably right; you would need to wire the fields separately to avoid radio wave interference by all of the electronics inside a stadium. You’d probably also need to contend with the fact that for any given match there are multiple balls being used; how do you “activate” one and “deactivate” another easily? These aren’t world-ending types of issues, but they’re enough to be off-putting; the system clearly isn’t quite as simple as I’d personally thought it would be.

Which brings us to the Hawkeye system. Blatter had this to say on the issue of goalline cameras:

“Even the Hawkeye producer has to admit that even with seven cameras, if the ball is in a bunch of players, you cannot see whether the ball is in or out [of the goal].”

Which, to me, reads as “If your fancy schmancy cameras can’t see through people then what good are they?”

Ironically, this is exactly the same problem that the referee encounters on every single call. I’m no referee apologist, but we tend to forget that the referee’s angle is not always perfect and that there really isn’t a solution for that; this isn’t gridiron, where the official takes up a specific position (along with the fifteen other officials and a camera crew) pre-snap. Soccer’s chaotic; the ball moves faster than people do, and the referee may not be in the position to see everything at every moment. He’s often forced into either using his best judgement and making a call based on what he thinks happened or just not acknowledging an incident and playing on.

On top of that, FIFA’s positioning guidelines dictate that there’s almost never anyone on the goal line as it is. The referee’s assistant, if he’s doing it right, should always be level with the second defender back (to determine offside, which is an entirely different problem). The referee should run on a diagonal across from his assistants, but he usually doesn’t go to the goal line. Even on corners, there’s nobody standing right there. A camera (which could also be mounted ABOVE the goal, eliminating that pesky “people are opaque” problem) would simply add another perspective. I’m still not really seeing the problem.

One point that consistently keeps coming back up from Blatter in these conversations is the cost. He expounded on this idea after the initial decision:

”The application of modern technologies can be very costly, and therefore not applicable on a global level. The universality of the game: one of the main objectives of FIFA is to protect the universality of the game of association football.

”This means that the game must be played in the same way no matter where you are in the world. If you are coaching a group of teenagers in any small town around the world, they will be playing with the same rules as the professional players they see on TV.”

I agree with Blatter on this point; the game shouldn’t be fundamentally different when played in front of 500 people in Romania than when played in front of 90,000 at a World Cup final. Lower league matches simply can’t afford retrofitting their stadia for new tech; this isn’t the NFL or MLB, where there are only 30-some teams who are affected. It’s not an understatement to say that there are literally hundreds of thousands of teams playing in tournaments, and all of them play by the same rule sets; changing those rules does change the game.

The question that remains for me, however, is why a rule change even needs to be made. What matters to most fans is getting calls right; when the stakes are higher (such as at a World Cup or Champions League match), this becomes more important. FIFA’s stance on this issue should simply be to leave technology up to the local FAs and associations; don’t mandate it’s use, but don’t discount it. If UEFA wants to mandate using cameras in heavily televised Champions League games, than they should be able do that without FIFA’s interference (Fiorentina approves of this plan).

At the end of the day, Blatter seems to believe that he’s preserving the game; the problem is that everything around the game, including the technology, has evolved. FIFA’s business model – which raked in a record $1.06 billion last year – is built upon their games being exciting; goalline technology (and the associated replay system that could eventually follow) is needed to make sure that their games are also fair.
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Long, but illuminating discussion.

[Maalox]

There'd better be the mother of all makeup calls coming.

More of that situational justice the European welfare states are so famous for? Great.

[cjdmadcow]

What's Lampard got to do to score today?

[Infield Infidel]

I'm thinking England losing on penalties

[Maalox]

MAN OF THE MATCH

[Maalox]

I like the rules that 1) the line is in and 2) if any part of the ball is on the line, the ball is in. I think American football should adopt like regulations.

[Maalox]

If the English keep playing aggressive like this, they will keep getting chances, and they WILL score.

[Apisith]

It's been an awesome match. The German defense looks tired, so England will get chances, but the Germans also look dangerous as fuck on the counter.

[SoxFanDK]

This is far from being a snoozefest, I must say!

And the ref is letting them play and not falling for the flops.....of course this might be, as the wife suggests, because he can't actually see the ball....

[cjdmadcow]

Joe Cole on for Milner.

[Maalox]

"Astro Boy" is Rooney?

[ifmanis5]

Nice dive by Rooney.

[Ahriman]

"Astro Boy" is Rooney?

Yep.

[Maalox]

That was a bit on the floppy side, Astro Boy.

[Maalox]

SEIG HEIL