It’s time for FIFA to enter the 21st century
From Johannesburg, South Africa — Well, isn’t that nice. The World Cup final on Sunday will be played with a special gold-colored ball in honor of Johannesburg’s gold-mining history.
Good to see Joseph “Just Call Me Sepp” Blatter paying attention to all the important details. If FIFA didn’t take care of things such as this, where would the World Cup be?
So we will have Shakira singing her little heart out, or lip-synching, more likely. We will have a golden ball that will fly around like the beach ball it is. We will have all the vuvuzelas hell could swallow.
And we’ll even have a referee. One from England, no less. Isn’t that nice?
I do not know Howard Webb. But I hope and trust that he gets every call correct when the Netherlands plays Spain for all the marbles in Soccer City.
I do know that this will be the last World Cup match to be officiated as we know it. By the time Brazil 2014 rolls around — when FIFA probably will allow use of a real beach ball in honor of Copacabana — things will be different.
Don’t believe me? Well, FIFA said so on Thursday, and you can always trust FIFA. Just listen:
“I would say that it is the final World Cup with the current refereeing system,” Blatter’s French puppet, Jerome Valcke, who doubles as FIFA secretary general or general secretary or some such, told the BBC.
“The game is different and the referees are older than all the players. The game is so fast, the ball is flying so quickly, we have to help them and we have to do something and that’s why I say it is the last World Cup under the current system.”
Quite a breathless little sentence or two by Jerome. But it does bring an interesting thought to mind: If 45 is too old for referees, is 74, say, too old for FIFA leaders, especially FIFA leaders who want to be elected to yet another term?
After all, if the ball is too fast for the players and the players are too fast for the referees and the game is too fast for everyone without a pause button on their remote, how on Earth are the sport’s movers and shakers able to keep up when the upper echelon was born before World War II?
Blatter came to Earth in Switzerland in 1936. Senior vice president Julio Grondona landed in Argentina in 1931. Executive Committee member Nicolas Leoz first saw daylight in Paraguay in 1928.
You can just see them all sitting around the table at executive committee meetings, blinking in the light, ear trumpets in place, adjusting their dentures, checking their pulses.
Small wonder they are so averse to technology and have resisted its introduction all these many years. Small wonder they are fighting a rear-guard action, walking sticks at the ready, even now.
It appears, by all accounts, that the World Cup will feature five on-field officials in 2014, instead of the current three. The so-called “fourth official” doesn’t really count. He is there merely to tell coaches to stay inside the nice little box FIFA has designed for them to inhabit during games.
Five pairs of eyes presumably would have spotted Frank Lampard’s shot for England crossing well beyond the German goal line. Five pairs of eyes presumably would have seen that Carlos Tevez of Argentina clearly was offside when he scored against Mexico.
Five pairs of eyes presumably would be able to catch everything that goes on in a game. Not as well, of course, as the use of instant replay, but that’s not quite on FIFA’s agenda just yet. Blatter and company are still learning about radio and the electric oven.
The sport deserves better than this. There was no need for 736 players and 32 coaches to travel all the way to South Africa just for some myopic geezer in an expensive suit, sitting in the comfort of his luxury suite surrounded by fawning sycophants, to tell them, “Too bad, it is the nature of the game, referees are human, better luck next time.”
It is well past time for soccer to come into the 21st century and for those whose minds are still in the 19th century to leave the stage.
Otherwise, we will have to go through all this again four years from now in Brazil. And as every Brazilian will tell you, there are far better ways to pass the time there than griping about refereeing.
