All We Will Remember is the Officials

Another Major Sporting Event, and All We Will Remember is the Officials

As the World Cup gets ready for the quarterfinals tomorrow all that we as sports media are talking about know is how bad the officiating has been and what it has cost some teams. So far in this World Cup a goal has been taken away from the USA during a comeback that would make anybody proud, a Brazilian soccer great has been red carded out of a game for a cheap dive that even my grandma who never has watched the sport knows it was a dive, a goal was given to the Carlos Tevez that even he knows he was offside for, and England gets robbed of a goal cause the ref can't see that the ball clearly crossed the line. Now I consider myself to be quite the soccer officianado and I was really looking forward to what this tournament was going to bring us this year, but quite frankly I can't even watch the rest of the World Cup cause I know that there is going to be more and more screw ups to the point that it is going to cost a team the World Cup Championship.

Also in the last few days we have heard all of the arguements as to why or why not soccer should go to a replay system, but I have come up with a good plan for what FIFA (Which is the governing body for Soccer) should do to impliment a replay system that even the casual watcher can get behind. Here is my plan:

1. Like in tennis, they have a system that decides line calls in or out called "The Hawkeye". What you do is you install this system into all goal posts so that when a ball crosses the line, a signal gets sent to the assistant referees and head referee notifying them of the ball crossing the line. This would take the human element out entirely of calling goals.

2. You institute instant replay like you have in American Football. You give each team two challenges. The coach has a flag that he can throw out onto the field to let the referee know that he is challenging a call. Now in soccer you don't have time outs to lose, so here is the punishment for soccer; for every challenge that you lose, you must lose a player off of the field for a 15 minute period. So if one team challenges a call and gets it wrong, that team then has to play a man down for 15 minutes. This makes it so that there is a replay system in place but the penalty is more severe for a team to use the challenge and be wrong. On this plan there has to be a time limit for the review. If in 2 minutes a call can't be rendered then the challenge is lost.

A simple two part plan to make refereeing more simple for soccer and that it won't add a whole lot of time to the length of the game.

So remember when you are watching the rest of the World Cup next week and a referee blows a call that sends home your favorite country, just remember my simple plan for replay and just think how much better the game will be when we can get most if not all of the calls right and we don't have to worry about a referee being a cause to remember such a great sporting event that only comes around every 4 years.

Email me with your instant replay plans for Soccer at Eric@BigBadSportsDaddy.com.