Post-match video review has been used to suspend players for violence undetected at the time, or to fix cases where referees gave a card to the wrong teammate. There’s too much money riding on key decisions, in a low-scoring sport. Part of the reason golden-goal was abandoned was that mistakes became utterly crucial. The increase in both number of games with TV coverage and also number of camera angles per telecast means that most fans now have an increasingly large mental store of obvious injustices to nurse.

The use of extra penalty-area monitors as in the Europa League is also a good idea. FIFA may go with that as an alternative to video review, whereas it should be in addition to it.

Probably the single most urgently needed improvement is some kind of automatic offside detection; officials get this wrong so often that fans barely even bother to complain about it any more. Small-enough sensors in the ball and on the players’ shirts should be feasible at a pretty low cost.

The cheating angle has been overblown. Punishing Henry in any way would be a ridiculous ex-post-facto option. Henry’s handball was not in the Maradona category: it was conscious, but not premeditated. Owning up to a handball is so rare that FIFA has given medals to the few players to have done so. While diving attracts opprobrium, I have never seen anyone comment on the way that both players in a 50-50 tussle will raise their hands for the throw-in or kick-out/corner when the ball goes out of play.

In fact, it appears that the much-maligned NHL has it right. First of all, they have two referees (and two linesmen, who are the equivalent of ARs). Forty years ago, they had only one referee, but they changed. Also, they have replay on disputes relating to goal scoring, but not otherwise. So the game isn’t interrupted excessively, like it is in the NFL, but the important calls are reviewed. Of course, a lot of the powers that be in NHL are Canadian, so this undercuts the original political point about the superiority of the American political/economic system. So only the first paragraph of this post has political implications, the second is just about sports.

PS: as long as a billion of people are following a travesty, it’s OK entertainment-wise I’d guess

Luckily emotion & jealousy does not rule Henry’s (to you undoubtedly spoiled) ways.

Not even murderers get life sentences in civilized countries.

Doesn’t stop the Australians from moaning about “cheats”, as with that Strauss catch (or “catch”) during the last Ashes series.

Anyway, didn’t the English and the Australians have a thing about this decades ago in cricket? And didn’t the Australians—who would leave things to the umpire—win, in the sense that everyone now does it their way?

“There was one match against Georgia where Ireland got a penalty and it was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen which changed the whole course of the game. I don’t remember the FAI after the game saying we should give them a replay.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/8370327.stm

The teams of “Van’s” will kick you out of the next Europeans for soccer – as we did you out of the next worlds at hockey. And now rugby is going Olympic …

Ireland … deserves to be beaten by a continental genius

Oh ‘tis true, ‘tis true. Pity, then, that Ireland had to make do with being beaten by a continental side so vastly teh suck that they couldn’t qualify for South Africa without first needing a play-off against little vampire minnow Ireland; and even then could beat them only by eschewing the foreign game for a jolly old round of gaa. The irony’s so rich, I’m getting acute pancreatitis even as I type these words.

And no base francophobia here, BTW. I’ve been thrilled by the French XV so far this autumn, and I say that as one of the very few people wearing a Manu Samoa top in the seats at the Stade de France tonight.