World Cup Reality Check

I call it soccer – see here for why – so let’s get that declaration out of the way.

Next, let’s call it sour grapes, now that Brazil and Argentina are both out of the World Cup in South Africa.

But I wanted to talk about all the controversies regarding FIFA’s refusal to use technology to assist them in resolving disputed calls on the field. When bad calls are made, like the one against England against Germany, and again in the Argentina-Mexico and Slovenia-USA matches, technology, through the use of replays, should be used to make the call once and for all. Careers and millions of dollars of investments, not to mention the hopes and dreams of entire nations, are riding on proper officiating. Accounting for human error, technology should augment the eagle-eyed referees, not replace them, and be used judiciously in the event of controversial calls.

But why ignore tools that are readily available? Technology is already used in training videos, as well as athlete conditioning and preparation. The stadiums themselves are riddled with technological innovations, from the tickets to the seats, to the big screens. Sports in general evolves, supported by technology. And with the stakes as high as they are, why does FIFA cling on to its dinosaur-ish tendencies and wake up to the realities of the 21st Century. Other sports take advantage of the instant replay rules (I can list many, but let’s look at cricket’s third umpire system for reviewing run-outs); why not on soccer’s biggest stage?

Finally, admittedly, I’m not a soccer-phile, so I really am just passive observer riding the hype. I’m just always impressed by the technologies required to pull off 21st Century spectacles (remember the Beijing Olympics?). So why can’t soccer come up with a more savvy way of clock management to remove the whole stoppage-time business. Stop the clock during dead time, maybe?