Blatter to reopen file on goal-line technology

WORLD CUP NEWS:IT'S NOT yet clear whether any of them asked if their country could be the ninth team in the quarter-finals, but Sepp Blatter confirmed yesterday morning that he had apologised to representatives of the Mexican and English football associations for the refereeing errors that had contributed to their teams' elimination from this World Cup.

He said that revisiting the question of how goal-line technology might be better used to assist match officials was inevitable in the wake of the weekend’s events which came just a day after Fifa had ruled out any further debate on the issue for the foreseeable future.

Blatter, however, continues to oppose any debate on the more widespread use of video to help with other disputed decisions. “It’s obvious that after the experiences so far at this World Cup it would be a nonsense not to reopen the file on goal-line technology,” he told a carefully selected group of media yesterday morning.

“We cannot change anything over 10 games to improve refereeing at major tournaments but we will look again at technology, goal-line technology, at the business meeting of the (law-making) International Football Association Board in Cardiff, Wales in July.”

That body, on which the four British associations have enormous influence, came out in favour of maintaining the status quo last time it considered the matter with the Northern Irish and Welsh associations amongst the opponents to change. Some experiments have been carried out, most notably at the under-17 World Cup in Peru in 2007, but a decision was taken not to proceed after it was decided that none of the methods employed was completely reliable.

Blatter’s change of tone, though, makes it possible that a more enlightened view might prevail when the matter is considered again. His comments yesterday come in the wake of the dramatic events of Sunday when Uruguayan officials failed to award England a goal in the afternoon game after a shot by Frank Lampard had clearly crossed the line. Then in the evening game two Italian officials somehow failed to spot Carlos Tevez in an offside position when scoring Argentina’s first goal against Mexico.

“I have apologised to the two delegations and I understand they are not happy,” the Fifa president said yesterday.

“The English delegation said ‘thank you’, the Mexicans nodded their heads. I deplore it when you see the evident referees’ mistakes. They were not five-star games for referees. We will start with a new concept on how to improve match control.

“I cannot disclose it now because the dossier is still on the presidential table but we are going forward and will announce something in October or November, because something needs to change.”

Blatter clearly remains opposed to calls for the wider use of video technology, the sort of move that might have helped the Republic of Ireland team in Paris last November, and he recently restated the basis for his position.

“The game must be played in the same way no matter where you are in the world,” he insisted. “The simplicity and universality of the game is one of the reasons for its success. No matter which technology is applied, at the end of the day a decision will have to be taken by a human being. This being the case, why remove the responsibility from the referee to give it to someone else?”

Former World Cup referee, Urs Meier of Switzerland agreed with Blatter’s redefined position yesterday when speaking to The Irish Times in Pretoria. “I think we are talking about two different situations here,” he said.

“In the England game, the situation is very difficult for the referee. His assistant is in the offside positions which is correct and even though he is well positioned too it is something that must be decided in a split second, whether the ball has crossed the line, from a distance of maybe 15, maybe 35 metres.

“It is hard to criticise the referee in these circumstances. It is very difficult for him and this is a situation that we can help with, by providing extra officials, a chip in the ball, it’s really not difficult to address.

“In the Argentina game, though, it is different. The assistant should have seen that the player was offside. But also the referee who should have seen that the player was all by himself and taken the responsibility to act himself. It’s a bad mistake but it is not practical to provide help by going to video every time such a situation arises.”

One of the technical support staff to the referees here, meanwhile, insisted that the officiating is constantly improving due to the work being done with referees and their assistants behind the scenes.

“In 2002 (World Cup) there were quite a lot incorrect offside decisions for instance,” said Dr Werner Helsen from Belgium. “It was 26.2 per cent. But we did the same analysis in Germany and we had 50 per cent less. We will now do the same analysis for this World Cup and I’m sure it will be better.

“Obviously, we all need to do what we can to decrease the number of errors but so far, in this tournament, the incorrect decisions are marginal. We have had 122 goals so far, and 96.5 percent of them were legal goals.

“After every game we have video debriefings,” he added, “with all of the critical decisions, and especially in terms of offside decisions, what we see is that the assistants generally do an unbelievable job. Yesterday (the Brazil game on Monday) was a good example. With the goal that was scored but also the goal that was disallowed, it was shown to be the correct decision.”