Updated throughout the day with quick takes from staff.
The fact of the matter is that FIFA was let off the hook by Mexico and England on Sunday. Both teams had incredibly horrific calls go against them in the second round, but rather than keep their respective matches against Argentina and Germany close enough to make the calls matter, they both folded under pressure. England should have been tied after Frank Lampard's obvious goal off the crossbar in the first half, but rather than come out with some fight in the second half, they laid down for the Germans and made the bad call an unfortunate side note.
Mexico was completely screwed by an offsides that wasn't called on Carlos Tevez's first goal for Argentina, compounded by the fact that the replay was shown on the big screen clearly highlighting the violation. But since there's no replay in soccer, seeing that the call was wrong couldn't change the fact that it was ruled a goal, even for the referee and his assistant who missed it. So, to avoid that controversy later in the tournament, FIFA has announced they will limit the replays shown in the stadiums. That…makes sense.
FIFA will censor World Cup match action being shown on giant screens inside the stadium after replays of Argentina's disputed first goal against Mexico fueled arguments on the pitch.This is absolutely unbelievable. Let's break it down so we can understand just how embarrassingly unbelievable this is:Angry Mexico players protested to referee Roberto Rosetti after the screens in Johannesburg's Soccer City showed Argentina forward Carlos Tevez was offside before he scored the opening goal in a 3-1 victory on Sunday. FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot said Monday that replaying the incident was "a clear mistake."
"This will be corrected and we will have a closer look into that," Maingot told a news conference Monday. "We will work on this and be a bit more, I would say, tight on this for the games to be played."
• A spokesman for FIFA is actually quoted in saying "this will be corrected" and admitted there was a "clear mistake.
• The clear mistake, however wasn't the wrong call, but rather SHOWING the wrong call in the stadium.
• The spokesman for the organizing committee in South Africa actually apologized for showing the Argentina goal that perpetuated the Mexico protest and helped lead to a halftime skirmish behind the benches.
• FIFA gave no additional indication of taking strides to correct these consistently terrible misses by their referees. Hiding from the problem seems much easier.
It's pretty clear that FIFA has no problem with the controversy and doesn't expect to change it anytime soon. Hiding the controversial calls from those in the stadiums only serves to protect the immediate safety of the referees, and those in attendance, in the event of a riot, which there seriously could have been during the Mexico protest, if you know anything about some of their sociopathic faithful.
For the rest of us, we're still talking about it, which means we're still talking about the World Cup and, in turn, still talking about soccer. There's far less conversation when the call is right, as applause will never sound as loud as jeers.
Forget about this much-debated "goal line technology" that puts a chip inside the ball to determine if it's crossed into the net, FIFA won't even let people in the stadium see the play on the big screen anymore. What's next, now that they've taken away in-stadium replay, they'll curtail the ability to watch the matches altogether? Should fans just pretend the calls haven't been terrible and stick their heads inside a vuvuzela?
Wait, I shouldn't give FIFA any ideas.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
14 comments
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
Scoreboard data copyright © 2012 by STATS LLC. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC is strictly prohibited.
OpenCalais - Powered by Thomson Reuters
•
Odds Shark 
Comments
What a sham.
by 1whiskey on Jun 28, 2010 2:16 PM EDT reply actions
Doesn’t MLB do the same thing – not show controversial replays on the big screen?
by mathesond on Jun 28, 2010 2:40 PM EDT reply actions
World Cup soccer is a joke. Watch English Premier League. It has better soccer, better officiating, and you don’t have to listen to those **** horns.FIFA is both corrupt and toothless. A bad combination.
by Sexy Pete on Jun 28, 2010 2:44 PM EDT reply actions
FIFA is stuck in the 1950’s.They do not care about the integrity of the game-only money.
by garryowen on Jun 28, 2010 3:58 PM EDT reply actions
OK, "football"… European Football… aka Soccer is the world’s most popular sport… has the highest paid coaches… players too I guess… has the world’s biggest TV audiences. and on and on and on. But NOT in America… we play a different style of football and between this game and baseball there is a legitimate debate as to which is really America’s national pastime. I vote football if not basketball… yet a third sport NOT on the European menus or venus. But there is one major, I mean, MAJOR difference in America’s sports and Euorpean Football… at least the version now showing in South Africa… the officiating. In American sports, officiating is held to a very high standard which includes the main objective of letting the athletes not the officials decide a game. In Soccer, where two or three or maybe four goals represents the scoring for an entire contest, the officials have a tremendous impact and/or control of the outhcome if one or more of their calls are in error concerning goals allowed or disallowed. As such, some form of instant replay is needed to check/verify their judgment as thus far in the FIFA World Cup such judgement simply hasn’t been on display.
by trojanwar on Jun 28, 2010 4:21 PM EDT reply actions
"In American sports, officiating is held to a very high standard which
includes the main objective of letting the athletes not the officials
decide a game":
I have pretty much only watched "american sports," and I have yet to see the officials you are talking about?
You mean the ones like the umpire that just blew a perfect game call?
Or, the ones ones that have made so many mistakes, so many times that replay calls are becoming the norm, not the exception?
Please explain.
by AW78 on Jun 28, 2010 4:41 PM EDT reply actions
How hard would it be to let play continue unless the Center Ref was contacted through his head piece from a video review ref to correct an obvious injustice?
Offsides would probably still have to be off limits. But the English goal was such a horrific call. I’ve never seen worse in any sport I’ve ever watched…except when that kid caught the ball in Yankee Stadium as the poor Oriole waited underneath. There were 6 (I said SIX!!) umpires for that game and none of them saw it. I was sitting in my home in freaking Gaithersburg, MD and saw it the first time…without replay.
So it’s not just a FIFA problem.
by 528808 on Jun 28, 2010 5:02 PM EDT reply actions
the asian mafia strikes again. do you need more proof?
by scurds on Jun 28, 2010 5:41 PM EDT reply actions
Yeah, baseball does the same thing. The only thing about baseball is that there are 162 games for every team, 9 innings, 27 outs, and about 150 pitches in each of them, so the impact of any one call is virtually meaningless. Whereas, virtually all of the action in soccer is meaningless, except the actual scoring of goals, and it’s staggering how often refs get the offsides and goal calls just plain wrong on those rare instances.
It’ll never catch on here. Americans like clocks that aren’t arbitrary, fouls that are called consistently (or at least don’t impact the game as much), toughness, scoring, and a firm sense of how a game is progressing. Soccer is pretty much none of those things…even at its highest of highest levels. Just the way it is, soccer fans.
by BuckeyeXB on Jun 28, 2010 9:03 PM EDT reply actions
Like I said, it’s the UGLY game. Everyone longs for the days when athletes were juiced b/c the outcome was still in question.
FIFA = Pro wrestling
by Ark_Razor on Jun 28, 2010 9:42 PM EDT reply actions
What do you expect from an organization named Fédération Internationale de Football Association . . .
by old__Chuckeye on Jun 29, 2010 12:13 AM EDT reply actions
We should have forced them to start calling it Soccer before we gave them a turnip worth of Marshall Plan aid.
by L'etat, c'est moi on Jun 29, 2010 12:45 AM EDT reply actions
Thanks for the add, Chuck!
by L'etat, c'est moi on Jun 29, 2010 12:48 AM EDT reply actions
Complete morons. And I am referring to the previous 6 posts.
by AW78 on Jun 29, 2010 10:14 AM EDT reply actions
Comments For This Post Are Closed