Yesterday, I considered the question of the name of our sport, football vs soccer. Today I jump on another question regarding the purity of the beautiful game: should we implement live video review? Please use the comment section to weigh in on this issue.
If I ever got dragged to a birthday party for FIFA President Sepp Blatter and was forced to stand up and say something nice about the guest of honor, the best I could probably muster is:
He’s got the coolest name in football after Titi Camara.
That’s wracking my brain under pressure to come up with a pleasantry for world football’s most powerfully controversial figure.
From pushing his absurd “home grown” rule where sides would need to field 6 domestic players in a starting line-up to suggesting that women’s football would be more popular if the players wore tighter shorts… From his labeling of Cristiano Ronaldo as “a slave” when Manchester United held onto him last summer to allegations that his 1998 election was rigged… Blatter will forever be known for doing and saying things that are outrageous and absurd.
But lo and behold, for once, he’s done something reasonable, something I actually agree with. Maybe I can say something nice at that party after all.
After last week’s Confederations Cup controversy over Howard Webb’s video-influenced penalty decision (described in more detail here by EPL Talk’s Rory Tevlin), Blatter announced that pitchside television monitors will be banned at international matches. Or at least turned so the fourth official cannot see them.
Banned, turned, switched over to Gordon Ramsay’s F Word: it doesn’t particularly matter. The important thing is FIFA avoid live video review in football at all costs.
There are those who say: But, look! It worked!
Supposedly, the fourth official saw the handball on the television monitor. He told Howard Webb ab0ut it. Webb had already given the corner kick, but now changed the call to penalty kick. Brazil converted and won it 4-3. So the call had been wrong. Webb corrected himself. Scant time was lost.
The main problem with video review in other sports is the stoppage it causes in play. Professional American football may be the worst perpetrator. The stoppage for video review is one of the many tools the NFL uses to keep a hold of the viewer for a good four hours. The officials will stop play to review close calls. And the coaches are each given a flag to toss on the pitch if they want to ask for a review. Mind-boggling considering the sport is an offspring of concise, 80-minute Rugby.
Don’t take this (or my previous article) as an attack on American football. It’s a wonderful sport. But the action comes in short bursts between time-outs, team changes and a steady helping of commercial breaks. If futbal football and Rugby football are great feasts, than American football is snacking between meals.
And now, baseball has sneaked video review into the mix! Only for limited use, they say. But it already has the officials taking time from game play to watch a video. “Sometimes it takes longer for the manager to get kicked out of the game,” said Dioner Navarro, glowing over the new procedure after catching during the first play that utilized video replay. Yes, Dioner, but at least a manager ejection is part of the action of a baseball game. The spectators have something thrilling to watch. Have you really stopped the game? I’m certainly not suggesting FIFA do away with ejections!
My fear is, with video replay, the MLB have opened the door for further stoppage. And there are those who would have FIFA do the same.
The argument, for now, is that Webb’s “use” of video review didn’t cause any stoppage because the monitor near the fourth official was a live feed. The use of it to overturn a decision was rapid and correct. But once we open that avenue, we are at risk for taking the concept to a debilitating extreme. What happens when we stumble across calls that are not so easy to review in haste. Soon we are stopping the match to consider the replay. In a game full of nuance, it will be tempting to use replay more frequently than we intend. Stoppage time piles up and our precious 90 minute time limit is obliterated. Or what happens when we decide the fourth official needs more information to make this work. We give him multiple monitors to cover all the off-the-ball action. Is he watching the television or the match? He’ll be removed from procedings. He may as well watch from home with his headset on.
The thing is we don’t need live video review. Officiating has always been and will always be fallible because the referees are human. But as long as they are equally human in both directions, the game is fair enough. The missed calls are something we all have to deal with. And no amount of technology will ever remove all the fallibility from officiating.
I use the term live video review in this piece because I am not opposed to post-match video review. Reversing incorrect bookings, discovering serial mistakes, or post-match punishment of players for bad tackles and dives could all be useful. To find the problems and correct them off the pitch won’t take from match play and could help officials learn from past mistakes while discouraging diving and dangerous fouls.
Live video review, though, is a road FIFA should never go down. Just play the game. Other sports should look to football, Rugby and any other sport that works hard to keep things moving. Video replay is an ill not a boon. FIFA must keep the door shut on it.
So for now, Mr Blatter, I applaud you, quietly, for turning the television around. A minor good decision that will surely, in the long view, be drowned in your sea of controversy. But at least I’ll have something nice to say on your birthday.
Tomorrow: do we expect too much from our International football?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
On a game that moves millions, leaving an open door to human-error is a recipe for disaster.
People criticize the use of video but I have never seen it implemented, have you? How can we decide whether it’s obtrusive or not if we don’t even have a basis for analysis? They could have tested a system on a this Confa Cup, which nobody really cares about. See how it works. I am all for bringing technology to promote fairness, let’s give it a try and then decide. And while we are at it, how about some electronic way to identify offsides?
Video ref needs to be introduced for 2 things. Decisions in the penalty box and to confirm a ball crosses the goal line. But there needs to be one caveat.
The referee should be the only one who can call upon the video ref. It should be considered a tool in his arsenal to use. ie. he’s not 100 percent sure he can make the right decision. He doesn’t have to use it. It’s up to him.
Violent conduct and cheating should be dealt with on video panels with heavy punishments. So you take a dive to win a penalty the player gets an instant red card, 3 game ban AND the team is docked 3 points. You’ll soon cut that behaviour out. I’m talking to you Drogba, Gerrard et al.
You’re spot on with post-match review. There are a number of particularly nefarious elements about the game that this could correct.
As for the live review, it should be kept out. The best thing it could be used for is the determination of whether or not the ball crossed the line for a goal, and I believe FIFA is already working on something along those lines involving hockey-style behind the net officials.
There is already instant replay, the question is whether or not the sport will implement it. Soccer won’t do it.
First you need to solve the problem of synching the stadium clock to the ref’s watch so that when he stops it, so does the time on the scoreboard. That would make replay easier and eliminate arbitrary determinations of injury time you would have to have to compensate.
Since that’s not going to happen, don’t expect replay to happen.
I’d be cautious about using video replay. I like American football well enough, but one of the reasons it is almost unwatchable is how slow the game moves, and video replay is one of the reasons. Players barely celebrate a touchdown or big play, instead they all pause for video review. Exciting plays are debated endlessly, the game stops for a long time, and then finally gets going again. The excitement in the stadium is killed. We should remember it is just sports, except the good and bad calls, and move on.
I highly doubt that the Brazil call was based on video evidence, because it all happened too quickly. From the web video I saw, by the time the replay had been shown once on tv, the ref had already changed the call. How could the play have been reviewed and called-in to the ref so quickly?
The simplest explanations are often the most likely. Webb says the linesman saw incident more clearly and corrected the ref. I can buy that.
I’m very optimistic that putting a ref behind each goal is going to provide more incidents like this – more like the team-based calls that the NFL refs make on a routine basis, with great accuracy.
Replays actually account for a very little slice of the average nfl game and a live review by the fourth official would take even less time. In a regulation NFL game without overtime replays can at most take up 12 minutes but I’ve never seen that happen since it would be the maximum use of replays by the coaches and require that the call on the field be reversed which gives the coach that third 2 minute replay. Add in the few reviews that occur in during the final two minutes of each half and on average you lose around 10 minutes of a 4 hour game to replays. In soccer (sorry but want to avoid the football confusion), it would take much less time, probably no more than 5 minutes at most which is about as long as you can lose for a bad injury, a keeper injury, or a big ruckus after a red card/penalty.
It makes no sense for people at home to know within seconds that a major error has been made but the ref and players kept in the dark simply because Fifa and UEFA are antiprogress. I would make a 30 second video review mandatory for all red card and penalty decisions. Those two situations usually take minutes of stopped time anyway and have such a large effect on the outcome of the match that errors should be minimized. I’d also give the ref the power to call for a 30 second review on questions of whether the ball crossed the line.
While mindful of the time-wasting ramifications, I am all for video-review. I would favor a real-time system where there is an extra ref in a booth somewhere monitoring the game who can speak with the ref on the field via a headset to reverse a call or provide information, as I discussed here:
http://sheahey.blogspot.com/2009/05/its-still-fng-disgrace.html
But a move as drastic as video replay may not be needed if the addition of a ref behind each goal works.
Either way, change should be afoot as the game only gets faster.
i think review should be limited to game deciding decisions like red cards and penalty calls. but the extra ref should solve the penalty calls at least.
My two cents:
Keep video replay out of football. I don’t like it in American Football either. Just see the “tuck rule” and you will see what I mean.
If video replay was the answer, then we wouldn’t have pundits arguing penalty awards on Monday mornings. There’s still loads of judgement calls.