Drinkable Chicken

This is pretty ridiculous:

To summarize, FIFA is no longer going to show repeats of “controversial decisions” during games. These would be goals that should have been flagged but weren’t, or vice versa, as we’ve seen quite a few times already this tournament. The “interesting” part here is that they are not striving to make better decisions, but rather to just let them stand (even in the face of overwhelming evidence) and cover things up.

I’m not sure there have been more bad decisions during this championship than usual; it may simply be the case that they are more obvious than they were before. Even so, FIFA’s staunch refusal to upgrade their decision-making methods is staggering. When you watch a game on TV, and someone scores or a card is given, a few seconds later the repeat is shown and it is usually immediately clear whether the referee’s decision was correct or not. How difficult would it be to have the referee (or an assistant) watch the repeat for a moment and then decide whether the original decision stands or not?

In fact, what the article suggests, is that FIFA officials *do* watch the repeat right away, and if the decision was “controversial” (i.e. wrong), they censor it (by refusing to show it again), rather than fixing it…!

This kind of stuff is no longer going to fly during the internet age… I suspect FIFA will have to change their ways real fast, or professional soccer as we know it will die out. What’s the point of watching games that are essentially made or broken by the referee?

~

Update (2010-06-29): This is more like it:

(FIFA big boss apologizes and says video technology will be be considered in future.)