- Blatter
Rarely does FIFA convene for anything other than rigged ballots and caviar/champagne dinners, but the Thierrygate of last Wednesday has forced them to meet next week in Cape Town (5-star hotels, be alert) to discuss possible rule tinkering and/or modifications ahead of the World Cup.
So the logic goes, if a handball can happen in a playoff game, what’s to stop it happening in a World Cup Final? Sooner or later, the law of probability suggests it has to happen sometime.
Being the quick-witted suits that they are, Blatter’s executive committee is coming together to talk about plans for their much-vaunted “Five Referees Solution” that’ll apparently catch all the cheating and chicanery that soccer players love to engage in. After all, as discussed in these very blog-pages, the answer to fundamental human incompetence is to add more incompetent human beings.
“Due to recent events in the world of football, namely incidents at the play-offs for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, match control (refereeing) and irregularities in the football betting market, the FIFA president has called an extraordinary meeting of the executive committee. It will take place in Cape Town on December 2.”
Sounds serious, right? Not so much when you consider they were scheduled to convene on December 3rd anyways, but at least they’re giving the illusion of caring so much about this sport from which they handsomely profit. Also on the agenda: corruption (not their own), pertaining to the rash of arrests across Europe in recent weeks regarding match-fixing and illegal betting.
To follow this schedule of “extraordinary meetings” and reading between the lines a little, it means that on December 4th they’ll categorically state that no changes or amendments shall be made.
If a referee can give a phantom PK like ireland got against Georgia, will replays stop it?
Is an error in the first round of qual. not as worthy?
Just let it go. The Irish whine and moan, its part of their ‘woe is me’ national identity. They can milk this for a good decade and people will forget the woeful quality of players they produce. Quick, how many irish players play in europe?
Italy got robbed by an offside in a world cup and even the italians didnt whine as much.
4 refs? 5? 6? Sure, go ahead but will this be only for international games in which case you are saying taht club games have less value. Will first league teams in Norway have to have 5-6 referees as well?
No one cares outside of Ireland and frankly no one outside cares about Ireland so let this rest like the Elizabeth Lambert story. Its spent.
Certainly it’ll be up to individual FA’s to implement the system or not.