Cav's Place

As I have done in 2008, actually also on June 15, as well as in 2010, I will once again wonder why aren’t teams allowed to challenge the decisions of the referees by asking them to look at the replays. It won’t be some technology making decisions, in fact that’d be impossible at the moment, but the referee will simply be able to properly see what happened and decide whether the original call stands or it was a mistake which should be rectified. It’d be simple, won’t require implementing anything that isn’t already being done for matches, if done properly it won’t even add all that much time, and it should be enough to get rid of huge mistakes such as the ones that once again plagued most matches so far.
In the past we had that fifth official whose duty was to watch the replays on a television screen and determine whether a goal was scored or not in case it’ll be uncertain whether the whole ball crossed the line, ignoring any and all other mistakes he may notice. Now they took that to the next level and poured who knows how much into technology that will determine whether a goal was scored on its own. And all of this unnecessary effort was done for a single issue that may appear once or twice during the entire competition, if at all. However, something that is absolutely necessary, will cost very little and require no new developments whatsoever, still isn’t being done and the only plausible explanation is that it’d prevent referees from being used to fix matches and they won’t allow that. Absolutely no other attempt to explain why this isn’t done can stand up to any sort of scrutiny for as much as a single moment.

Yes, what I was first saying, back in 2008, about the referees themselves being able to ask to watch the replay before making a final decision, was a bad idea, because many may have been tempted to do it for most decisions and it’d have been a complete mess, but the idea of teams being allowed to do this in order to challenge a decision definitely stands. Obviously limit this right, two or three wrong challenges per half during the regular time and two more during extra-time, whether one per half or both granted from the start, but of course a challenge shouldn’t count as having been used unless the referee will stand by his original decision even after watching the replay.
This way, teams will know not to waste them, not too much time should be added unless the referee is particularly bad, but at the same time any other complaints or discussions with the referee would vanish because if a player or official will complain but the team, through the coach or team captain, won’t actually ask for a challenge, it’ll mean those who complain know they’re wrong and are only trying to create some pressure or waste some time and should therefore receive yellow cards from the first words or gestures. In addition, the clock could and should be stopped from the moment a team challenges a decision and until the referee restarts the match after viewing the replays, so the time currently wasted with these discussions that are now pointless but nevertheless tend to take place after particularly questionable or simply infuriating decisions will be recovered.

I guess I’ll stop here, because I just meant to quickly mention this again between two matches. If I felt up to writing more about the World Cup at the moment, I’d be picking on very different issues, largely related to the fact that Brazil shouldn’t be hosting it any more than South Africa should have hosted the previous one… Or any more than Russia should host the next or Quatar the one after that.