[quote author=Rosco link=topic=40771.msg1128073#msg1128073 date=1277791540]
The US Media are all over this issue.
They're saying only a second rate sport would react in this manner, and that Blatter's insistence that controversy is good for the game regardless of how it actually affects the game is ridiculous.
I think if we're to have some change in football it will come on the strength of their protests, the rest of the world seems to accept the ridiculousness of the sport because it's traditional.
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Completely agree, though I think it's thought rediculous by players, managers, everyone, everywhere, just not fifa.
The reffing has been of its normal standard, and was better than normal the first week or so (though less was happening). Think about the premiership, on each weekend there is usually one call at least that changes a game. Now there are as many games in a matter of a couple days, they seem to be one on top of the next. It's not unexpected, it happens every single tournament.
Refs have an impossible task, I don't blame them at all.
It makes me really angry. It's really as fucking absurd as Bjorn Borg coming out with a wooden racket, except it is for the whole of the sport. It's just blatantly wrong. It's all the more irritating that Fifa flirt with it, talk about exploring it, then do nothing.
Hawkeye have already sorted out the goal line thing for football, it's been tested, just stick it in. Goal line issues, done.
Retroactive punishment for diving. Diving gone.
Video replay by a 5th official off the pitch, for score changing calls (free kicks in scoring position, penalty calls) decisions in the time it already takes for people to bitch and moan while surrounding the ref.
Anything would be better than nothing, and yet the old men of FIFA, at the heart of a sophisticated, globalized entertainment product, in a birds nest of cables, controls rooms, and electricity, beamed by satellite, carried in HD and 3D, continue to attempt to be amish.
Of course it turns people off the sport who don't traditionally give a shit about it. It's blatantly retarded. Blatters statements on the issue are so contradictory as well. He says that replays would kill the opinion and controversy in the game, but says that if you showed a replay, there'd be 10 different opinions by 10 different experts. The truth is that there still would be some controversy and room for interpretation, but the area of uncertainty would be pushed out of the realm of the blatantly unjust. Blatter says we like the controversy, but moves to censor us seeing the controversy by stopping the replays in the stadium, because we clearly don't like it, and the players like it less. The position is untenable. Why are they so radical on this point, what do they have to gain?
