IFAB comes up with sweet FA

“We” being the global football community: players, trainers, journalists, fans, anyone who contributes to discourse about the world game and how to make it even better and fairer.

For a long time “we” have made it plain it was time for “them”, FIFA, to rethink its position on goal-line technology, microchipping of balls and video replays. If other sports could be made fairer through technology, why not football, the world’s most popular sport, the sport “we” entrust “them” to run?

Sensing the mood of disquiet, especially in the wake of the Thierry Henry affair, even FIFA president Sepp Blatter relaxed his own well-voiced opposition to technology, stating: “I'm not absolutely against it. If the technology is ready to adopt, then I am in agreement. If the security of the system is guaranteed then we will introduce it.”

Accordingly the International Football Association Board, the supreme council of FAs that approves changes to the Laws of the Game, would consider the issue and make a definitive decision on how to proceed forward at their annual meeting at FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich.

That meeting took place last week. And the end result was, no prizes for guessing, sweet FA.

“Technology should not enter into the game,” declared FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke after it was put to a vote and FIFA used its four votes to join the Welsh and Northern Irish FAs and defeat the English and Scottish bloc 6-2. “Why should we have technology in a game where the main and unique parts should be the humans, players and referees?”

Why? Well, as Arsene Wenger says: “If you love football you want the right decisions to be made.”

It’s pretty simple, isn’t it?

And the two companies developing the technology, Cairos and Hawk-Eye, think so, despite having devoted thousands of man hours and tens of millions of dollars getting their products rigorously tested and tweaked to convince these doddery stick-in-the-muds. And it was all for nothing. Paul Hawkins, the managing director of Hawk-Eye, is livid.

“I don't understand why they invited us out there to start with if they never wanted technology at all,” he fumed. “The technology works but their process for decision-making is totally unrepresentative of football. I doubt there is any issue in football that is so unanimous.”

Nor can I. So how can IFAB be so out of touch with what “we” all want?

Well, according to Valcke: “If we start with goal-line technology then any part of the game and pitch will be a potential space where you could put in place technology to see if the ball was in or out, whether it was a penalty and then you end up with video replays. The door is closed.”

The Pandora’s box argument. Bollocks. Cricket, rugby league and tennis have embraced technology and the experience both for the athletes involved and those watching them has been enhanced. All three sports have not ground to a halt after opening the door to innovation.

Former referee Graham Poll, who knows one or two things about getting decisions wrong, blames IFAB’s “level of arrogance” for the decision and believes its continued inaction is “really affecting the confidence and respect that match officials now have” when they go out on the pitch in a sport where the stakes are getting higher all the time.

So we now have a situation where the IFAB and FIFA are telling us they have full confidence in referees yet the men with the whistles themselves are rapidly losing whatever confidence they had in the first place because fans and players simply have no confidence in them.

It defies explanation. Just like the IFAB’s disgraceful decision.