FIFA leave beautiful game to rot

“All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”

There’s probably not much more that can be added to the uproar over The Henry Affair. Whether it was deliberate cheating or crass opportunism, it was pretty obvious that FIFA would not sanction a replay even after the Irish FA lodged a formal complaint.

Henry took advantage of the situation, but it is hard to say that the handball was a premeditated act.  Either way, it was against the rules of the game, hence the sense of injustice, although why the world outside of Ireland feels as strongly about it as the victims I don’t know. The sense that Henry was previously an unblemished example of sportsmanship is also false – remember against Spain at the 2006 World Cup when he went down clutching his face, despite Puyol’s arm actually brushing against his chest?

The predictable media hysteria, which is continuing even in the cold light of day with OTT calls for Henry to be banned from the entire World Cup, threatens to mask the real issue that we should be focused on – that perhaps football’s biggest problem is FIFA itself.  People rightly argue that ordering a replay would set a dangerous precedent, but the flip-side is that huge damage is done to the game every time Blatter and his cronies do nothing in the face of scandal.

Henry – not such a good sporting example

FIFA’s double standards

Each World Cup tends to bring with it a new drive for fair play, with tournament referees instructed to crack down on diving, time wasting or whatever.  2010 will doubtless be no different.

This is all very noble, but double standards are at play. Whenever blatant cheating goes unnoticed by match officials, FIFA’s default response is to thrust their heads into the sand with as much enthusiasm as they can muster. The referee’s decision is final, they say, we cannot intervene. In doing so they are inferring that, actually, cheating is fine by them, as long as you can con the referee at the time.

It’s a bit like the police saying they can’t prosecute on the basis of overwhelming CCTV evidence because they didn’t catch the criminal at the scene of the crime.

By refusing to implement the use of technology to assist with important decisions, FIFA show just how out of touch they are. Even cricket, for goodness sakes, started down that road years ago, a sport renowned for it’s love of tradition and for hankering after “the old ways”. Yes there is concern for the authority of the umpires, but cricket recognizes that giving them additional tools with which to do their job is a sensible course of action.

Football coverage on TV has advanced to the point where it is now obvious that to ask a single referee to administer an entire pitch with only touchline assistants to call upon for help is unreasonable and unrealistic. As if that were not challenge enough, the rest of the world is encouraged to judge their competence using the very same tools they themselves are denied access to.

Technological assistance must be provided to referees as soon as possible.

If you are someone who says that video refereeing will cause unacceptable delay, I would suggest you consider the amount of time wasted during each match while players complain about refereeing decisions and throw tantrums that a two year old would be proud of.

And if you feel that introducing technology to the football’s showpiece competitions would devalue the lower levels of the sport, again take a look at other sports that have taken this route – this simply hasn’t happened. When was the last time you watched a big screen replay at a non-league match anyway?

On the contrary, by not using technology at all the entire game is tarnished by cheating and bad conduct, if not directly then at least by association.  Why is it that so many schools football referees receive horrific treatment at the hands of over-eager parents?  Images of Premier League stars screaming in a referee’s face must at least be part of the answer.

Technology alone is not enough

Another lesson that can be learned from cricket is that technology itself is not enough to prevent the sort of controversy we saw in Paris. Technology still has to be operated and interpreted by fallible humans, and few incidents are as clear cut as Henry’s impression of Michael Jordan.

It will allow officials to identify causes and culprits much of the time, but there has to be an effective disciplinary system to punish would be cheats and deter them from taking liberties in the first place. Judging by how much of it we see, a yellow card is clearly an acceptable risk where diving is concerned, to give just one example.

Meanwhile, in stadiums around the world players are able to handball, shirt-pull and so on safe in the knowledge that they are unlikely to get caught anyway. Blatter can rely on the apologists to tell us that, if everyone resorts to cheating, it’ll all even out “at the end of the day”, or that it is all just “part of the game”.

Why it is that we feel that breaking the rules of the sport falls under the category of luck I cannot fathom. Do we really want the most popular sport in the world to be openly associated with cheating?

FIFA talk the talk when it comes to fair play, yet they are not prepared to walk the walk. Football deserves better than the rotten, self-serving administration that it is stuck with.  If Blatter & Co choose not to take any action to prevent a repeat of the Henry incident in the future, football moves a big step closer to being a sham.

It is refreshing to hear that a large scale investigation, including arrests, is taking place regarding match fixing and is having success.  Perhaps FIFA should start to view cheating such as Henry’s to be as serious a crime.