Yesterday Sepp Blatter announced that there will be no change to the way games are refereed in the 2010 World Cup. Two further assistant referees (as used in the Europa Cup this season) will not be introduced in South Africa.
Blatter said: "We spoke about what to do with refereeing in future. It's clear that the main match official and his assistants cannot see everything that happens on the field of play. So, is it better to have more match officials or open the door to technology? We will have to evaluate this, though we did take one decision: even if the experiment with two additional match officials in the [UEFA] Europa League continues through to the latter stages (of the competition), there won't be any changes for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. We will continue to use one main match official, two assistants and a fourth official. There's no discussion on this, (the finals) are too soon for us to evaluate other possibilities."
It seems pretty blinkered to me. The introduction of two more assistants - one behind each goal - would make it almost impossible for players to get away with hand balls in the penalty area, and goal line judgements would be improved. It seems an easy one.
Video technology - although quoted as being used in other sports (e.g. cricket, rugby) is a more difficult one. The nature of football is its flow and several interruptions per game for video reviews would not serve the game well. This, therefore, is not an easy decision to make, but at least they're looking into it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment