Cheers to Elliott, who has given me a platform to openly disagree with him even though I haven’t told him yet. More on that later.
First, many apologies to my 2 loyal readers (Hi mom!) for the lack of posts. A trip to Cape Town where I had no internet access except for the blackberry restricted my ability to post. Is it too late to rewind back and give analysis of the US/England match?
- Of course it’s not. I actually only want to talk about one bit of the Cup that hasn’t gotten too much attention: logistics. FIFA has GOT to figure this out. Go on FIFA’s website and try to find recommendations for how to get to each stadium. Look for information on public transport: rail, buses, shuttles, anything. And try to find the location of the park-and-ride facilities. Good luck!
At some point we figured out how to get there, but upon arrival we realized FIFA and South Africa had decided it was a good idea to play World Cup matches in a 40,000-seat stadium with one 2-lane road as the single exit. The scene outside the stadium, even after 30 minutes inside after the match celebrating, was a trainsmash (RSA lingo!) of epic proportions. Just an enormous mass of people, and none of them knew where to go or how to get back to their cars. (Did I mention no parking lot? Sorry! Park 6 miles away and take a 10-seat shuttle to the stadium.)As you might have guessed, it took us an hour just to get to our car and then another 3.5 hours to drive the 80 miles back to Pretoria. FIFA–take care of this.
- Speaking of things FIFA needs to take care of, the botched call to disallow Maurice Edu’s go-ahead goal in the US/Slovenia game yesterday will and should reopen the debate on instant replay. Elliott has covered the subject before here. FIFA’s rambling, incoherent opinions on the subject are here. Elliott’s makes a bit more sense, but everyone acts as though other sports have unrestrained use of instant replay which halts games nonstop, which is basically never true. In the NBA, the refs can opt to use instant replay if they’re personally not sure of the correct call. In MLB, only a very few types of plays get reviewed. In the NFL, a coach gets two challenges/game.
Really the question shouldn’t be whether or not we use instant replay. Poor officiating cost Ireland a trip to the World Cup. That’s something many of those Irish players will never get another chance to do. (And it’s punished us by making us watch a dreadful French side.) Poor officiating may just cost the US a trip to the Round of 16. All the slippery slope arguments are proven wrong by the amazingly successful use of instant replay in other sports. When’s the last time a crucial NFL match turned on an UNDOUBTEDLY incorrect call? Instant replay doesn’t exist to remove all doubt from all situations, but to right CLEARLY incorrect calls. Really the question should be how we set up instant replay to least interfere with the flow of the game. Games actually already involve quite a bit of stop and go–I can’t find official numbers, but estimates seem to range from 25-35 fouls occur/game, and this number doesn’t include goal kick/corner kick/throw-in restarts. Adopt NFL style rules, and you’re talking about a max of 4 more stops/game. Not only do you get more accurate matches, but you reduce the incentive to dive. I can’t think of a single way to make the game better.
- Finally, and this isn’t soccer related, but please go to Cape Town. Do it. Do it in January when it’s summer. Do it for the wine. Do it for the beaches or the penguins. But mostly….
…do it for views like these.
No related posts.
T,
We all know your mom would never stumble into a backalley soccer blog like this, even to support your writing!
I am terrified of the commercials taking over soccer ala NFL games that last 4 and 1/2 hours. I could maybe see a replay rule for goal mouth decisions (because play tends to stop anyway), but I subjectively value the flow of soccer more than perfection in individual refereeing decisions.
I just don’t see any way soccer ends up moving in the direction of football. Not only are the vast vast majority of fans like you (including myself) and wouldn’t tolerate movement that far, but soccer just doesn’t lend itself to slowing down as much as football, which has stopped clocks for a high percentage of plays. No one is going to support such a major overhaul of the rules.
Perhaps we don’t disagree all that much. The devil is in the details–goal mouth decisions would have prevented the Henry goal and presumably would have fixed the US/Slovenia goal. Perhaps it’s like the NFL where coaches get to challenge two plays a game (would be nice to prevent unnecessary red/yellow cards). I don’t think the question is whether anyone values the flow of soccer more or less than perfection. The question is how close can we get to perfection (or just better–perfection may be a red herring) without sacrificing the flow of the game.
Unfortunately, FIFA seems to prefer their head-in-the-sand approach:
“Coulibaly was given a poor rating in an expedited performance review Saturday, according to a Yahoo! Sports report, which cited an unnamed FIFA source.
FIFA said the governing body would not comment on officiating before a scheduled session, when as many as 30 World Cup officials and members of the FIFA Referees Committee will meet with the media.”