Fifa Must Avoid Becoming A Dinosaur By Cameron Duodu

One Sunday afternoon, I was going to visit a friend near our school at Asiakwa when I was surprised by groups of young men running very fast from the school park. They were being chased by other young men, also running very fast. I could see that their "eyes were red paa"!

Before I could discern what was happening, they had whizzed past me and gone. Soon I heard the sound of blows being exchanged and cries of pain coming from not very far away. I quickly made myself scarce from the scene.

I later learnt that there had been a fight on the football park, and that this had been carried over into the town.

The fight began after the referee had awarded a penalty against the visiting team.

“Referee konkonsa!” (Referee who is partial) shouted members of the visiting team.

“He's not a partial referee!” the home team retorted. “You guys simply don't know the rules of the game. If you use bugabuga (rough tactics) to cut someone down in your goal area, you have to pay for it with a penalty.”

“But he wasn't cut down. He dived!”
“The referee says he was cut down but didn't dive, and the referee's word is final.”

“Ho -- this hopeless referee konkonsa?”
“He is no referee konkonsa but one of the best.”
“He is useless!”
“He isn't!”
Pah!
Gbuh!
Gburah! Pah! pah!
Pah! pah! gburum!
A free for all began. You would have thought that the visitors would go back to the lorry that had conveyed them to our village and drive away when they realised that the home team was using its fists to enforce the fact that the penalty was genuine. But no. They stood their ground and gave slap for slap, knuckle blow for knuckle blow and kick for kick. Even when spectators from our village who were not taking part in the match joined in, the strangers didn't flee but took them on. When the locals ran away, the more macho fellows among the visitors chased them. (Apparently, the visitors had anticipated trouble and had brought many fighters along for "the ride"! More likely for the fight!)

Ever since then, I have always kept my mouth shut when I go to watch a football match. I have been tempted to break my vow several times, for what goes on in the stands when tough matches are being played, is plain murder of the truth. You clearly a guy is plainly offside, but let the referee rule out his goal and the insults that would be rained on him, in a voice loud enough to force him to hear it, wherever he is, would be so many that one would need a bucket to collect them all. I don't know how many people have burst their eardrums at football matches, but they must be many.

Because of satellite television, war in the stands of the greatest teams -- Chelsea, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Milan, for example -- have become “universal world wars” nowadays, as one friend tautologically terms them. These universal wars are waged on Internet chat forums for days after controversial matches have been played. When matches which count in the qualification for the World Cup arise, then the Internet can go into meltdown as the war over a controversial refereeing decision rages on and on.

Such was the case of the ”Thierry Henry foul” of 18 November 2009. If this foul had been given by the referee, Ireland would almost certainly have qualified for the World Cup. And France would have been ditched. As a result, the debate on Henry's foul has been even more blatant than the infamous “hand of God” foul committed by Diego Maradona against England in the Word Cup finals in Mexico in 1986. This foul, even more than Maradona;s, should definitely have been caught by either the referee or one of his assistants.

Yet Fifa has allowed the goal "scored" by France as a result of the foul to stand. This has allowed France to qualify for the World Cup in place of Ireland. Most fair-minded people agree that the only fair decision Fifa should have come to, when it discussed the issue in Cape Town last week, was to order France and Ireland to replay the match. But Fifa is as immovable as a mountain.

The incident has brought into sharp focus, the need for Fifa to be forced to employ modern electronic techniques to help determine controversial issues regarding the refereeing of very important matches. The current refereeing rules were evolved in the days when the people who could watch the best matches could be counted in their scores of thousands. These days, a good Cup Final anywhere, let alone a World Cup match, can be watched by crowds estimated to number a billion!

As a result, a bad Fifa decision is an affront to the sense of fair play of hordes and hordes of people. It is these multitudes who are enabling Fifa, with their lucrative subscriptions to pay-V channels, to enjoy revenues from television screening of matches, that are unheard of. Fifa's income per annum today can rival the gross domestic product of some small countries. It can therefore make the investment in equipment that can, within seconds, make decisions from instant replays -- watched by a “technical umpire” -- available by ear-piece to the referee on the field.

Fortunately for Fifa, several other sports, including American football and basketball, have done the ground-work and instant replay advice has become widely available and been tremendously accurate. All Fifa has to do is to adapt their techniques to the special requirements of football.

Even tradition-bound cricket, which has never been as rich as other sports, has taken the plunge and forked out the money necessary to make the results of matches as controversy-free as possible. Cricket's experiment with “the third umpire” has been so smooth and shown such generally admirable results that a third element -- decisions on the troublesome “lbw”(leg before wicket) rule -- have just been added to “catches” and “run-outs”. The “lbw” decision, as predicted by “Hawkeye”, is being used to very good effect in a Test Match series that is going on between Australia and the West Indies right now.

Thus, it is no longer possible to blame the loss of a match on bad umpiring decisions in cricket. This use of technology has not come too soon: it is reported that one of the finest bowlers of his age -- if not of all time -- Michael Holding of the West Indies (his nickname was “Whispering Death” because his run-up to bowl, and his bowling action were so smoothly co-ordinated that all the batsmen could hear, when he got them out, was the ball whistling past to hit their stumps!) was reduced to crying on the field, after a partial “home umpire” had refused to give out many of batsmen Holding had got out. Bad umpiring can do that to grown men! And, of course, it clothes a whole sport with contempt.

Members of Fifa should revolt against the executive committee, call an emergency meeting and order Fifa to get the technical equipment that can make the World Cup in South Africa super-controversy-free.

Fifa has the money. It has the time to train the technical umpires who can use the equipment. The world wants the World Cup to be as entertaining and clean as is humanly possible. So what is Fifa waiting for? Just for some associations to organise a revolt against the executive committee and force the decision through.

Fifa cannot, simply, be allowed to continue the terrible system of decision-making on the field inherited from the antiquated dens of football of the 18th century.

Fifa must not continue to enjoy its hallowed status of the embalmed dinosaur in the age of digital exactitude. The world is tired of hearing from defeated teams, the moaning whine: “We wos robbed!”

By CAMERON DUODU

Development / Accra / Ghana / Africa / Modernghana.com