The sound of the Fifa stable door closing is almost deafening. Surely the time has come for football’s world governing body to act with foresight rather than hindsight and embrace technology.
Fifa’s approach to the furore that surrounds the “Hand of Henry” incident is reactive rather than proactive. Its considering of two additional assistants gives thought to what has gone before but doesn’t think about what incidents could happen in the future once again to bring the credibility of the competition into question.
Additional referees have had mixed reports in the Europa League, but overall probably have helped to increase the percentage of correct decisions made. The use of technology could help much more without slowing down the game — in fact in some instances it would speed up the game. How long did Ireland argue with the referee after the goal? The use of technology without slowing down the game will not enable 100 per cent of decisions to be made correctly, but it will eradicate the obvious mistakes that most harm the credibility of the sport.
For goalline decisions, the argument is very clear — there are two systems already available which can provide the information to the referee within 0.5sec of the ball going over the line. These systems have been thoroughly tested and proven to work. Such technology is far superior to an additional assistant who will not always be positioned directly on the goalline and will not be able to tell conclusively if the ball did pass over the line (other than in the obvious cases such as the Roy Carroll incident). If a ball thunders down off the bar and spins out, it could be over the line for less than a 50th of a second and the human brain simply cannot work that fast.
In addition to this, we believe we can provide technology that can provide a conclusive answer within five seconds of an incident. While five seconds would be too slow in some cases, it would be fast enough to help in a large percentage of incidents. If technology was used only to review incidents immediately before a goal being scored and yellow/red card incidents, it would substantially increase the percentage of correct decisions without slowing the game down.
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The two problems that technology has when it comes to football are:
1. Michel Platini is against the use of it — his issue is a moral one and the quest for football to be played the same way on the local park as it is in the World Cup final. I look forward to seeing five officials at the park next year then ...
2. The International Football Association Board has no technical understanding, it tries to make decisions based solely on what exists today rather than what could be possible. The board is predominantly made up of elderly gentlemen who have not grown up with technology.
Hawk-Eye has met with and written to Fifa — an open letter is available at hawkeyeinnovations.co.uk — but no reply has been received. If at the World Cup next year there is a controversial goalline decision or any other incident that technology could have quickly resolved, it will be interesting to see if Fifa still searches reactively for a solution.