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By Andrew Warshaw at Celtic Manor
March 5 – Goal-line technology moved a significant step forward today when football’s lawmakers said it could be in place by the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.
Announcing that tests for deciding whether the ball has crossed line would continue for another year, FIFA President Sepp Blatter was clearly keen to avoid a repetition of Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal at last year’s World Cup in South Africa that caused such an international outcry.
Blatter was once a fierce opponent of any scientific methods to help referees but performed a U-turn in South Africa and repeated the time has come for a rethink – provided a suitable system can be found that is 100 percent foolproof.
“That was a blatant, immense error,” he said of Lampard’s disallowed error.
Speaking after a meeting of the International FA Board (IFAB), the guardians of the game comprising FIFA and the four home associations, Blatter told a news conference: “If it works definitely, the Board will say yes to technology.
“And if the Board says yes then there should be no problem to have it in 2014 in Brazil.”
He ruled out any system being in place for the 2012 European Championships in Poland and Ukraine, however, with the IFAB instead sanctioning UEFA’s experiment of two extra officials that has been used in this season’s Champions League and Europa League.
Although the IFAB last year threw out goalline technology, FIFA recently conducted private testing for 10 systems.
All of them failed to meet the strict criteria but it is now anticipated that both Hawkeye and manufacturers of a microchipped ball will be invited to fine-tune their systems over the next 12 months, in proper match conditions rather than on FIFA’s artificial pitches and, crucially, with FIFA funding .
This time last year the IFAB supported UEFA President Michel Platini’s insistence on human beings rather than scientific aids for helping referees.
England and Scotland were the only two Home Associations in favour of technology but the Welsh and Northern Irish were persuaded to run with the new approach.
English FA chairman David Bernstein said he would have preferred the concept to be agreed in principle rather than for testing simply to be extended.
“We are encouraged by what we’ve heard today and the developments on technology are very positive,” he said.
“We might have liked to have gone a little further because we would have liked the principle of goal-line technology adopted.
“If we can put a man on the moon in the 1960s you would think we can work out how to measure whether a ball has crossed the line.
“We have gone a long way forward and if the right product comes through there is a very high chance of it going through.”
At the same meeting, the IFAB outlawed players wearing snoods, the fashionable neck-warmers worn by a string of Premiership stars including Carlos Tevez and Samir Nasri.
“There was not even a discussion because this is not part of the equipment and it can be dangerous, you could risk hanging yourself,” Blatter said.
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