I don’t know if Michel Platini is a fan of Ashes cricket.
If he is, he might have allowed himself a wry smile at the way debates relating to the sport’s attempts to harness technology to improve the quality of on-pitch decisions have provided an engrossing sub-text to the live action as the series has progressed.
Platini as far as I know still opposes use of the sort of goal-line technology that the Premier League will deploy for the first time at Anfield on Saturday when Liverpool and Stoke City kick off the 2013-14 season.
Having witnessed Frank Lampard’s ‘goal’ that wasn’t for England against Germany at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Bloemfontein, I have to say that I am with Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore on this one: it is indeed “a very exciting development in world football”.
One problem facing technicians and rulemakers was that there is no reason to stop the game if the ball has not crossed the goal-line; an ideal system would therefore need to deliver its verdict almost instantaneously, while play was continuing.
The speed of the new Goal Decision System, with decisions apparently relayed to referees within a second via watch and ear-piece, is thus almost as important as its accuracy.
While final judgement, inevitably, will depend on whether the system is effective in preventing real-life, real-time injustices, if it performs as billed, it is hard to see who could object to it, except perhaps on cost grounds.
That does not mean that it would necessarily be a good idea for football decision-makers to turn to technology for help in other areas where refereeing mistakes can have an important bearing on the outcome of key matches.
Indeed, I think the Premier League and other competitions would be well-advised to restrict the use of technology to help referees with their real-time decision-making to just this one critical issue.
Goals, after all, are the sole currency of football. They are scarce creatures – a lot scarcer than baskets in basketball, or even (usually) wickets in cricket.
With so much hinging on each and every elite-level result nowadays, and with errors liable to be quickly exposed, it has to be right to do everything possible to ensure that justice is seen to be done on this key geometrical question of whether the ball has crossed the goal-line or not.
Of course, if the new system works well, pressure is likely to build for technology to be utilised to prevent poor decisions of other kinds.
I suppose at a push, and if cost and reliability levels were acceptable, you might argue logically for technology to be granted the decisive say on other decisions involving lines, where an objective, right-or-wrong ruling ought, nearly always, to be possible.
But I would hate to see control wrested away from human officials to this extent.
It is goals, not throw-ins or corners, that win football matches. Though managers are adept, after the event, at tracing goals conceded to allegedly erroneous decisions by referees in the build-up to a strike, it is rare for there to be no other contributory factors.
A better approach might be to allow referees to consult a colleague with access to a video monitor, on their own initiative, to verify whether a line-decision resulting in the game being stopped is correct.
This could include the matter of whether a foul near the penalty-box had been committed just inside, or just outside, the area.
And, galling as it sometimes is for clubs and supporters, I think it would be fiendishly difficult to design a system in which technology could infallibly be used to police the offside rule – at least as the laws of football currently stand.
This is because so much depends on the referee’s interpretation of what constitutes being involved in “active play”.
Yes, in cases where a goal is awarded and play therefore stops, referees could in theory deliberate at their leisure with the help of video footage to determine whether an offence had been committed.
But what about those occasions when an attacker who would otherwise be bearing down on goal is flagged offside?
How could you possibly recreate that situation if the flag turned out to have been raised in error?
Bravo, then, to the Premier League for pressing ahead with this new Goal Decision System.
But I would be extremely wary about extending the use of this sort of technology to assist referees with the less crucial, or clear-cut, decisions they are called upon to make. However well this innovation works.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938
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