It does not matter how many times you watch Damien Delaney’s tackle on Christian Benteke during Liverpool’s controversial win at Crystal Palace on Sunday, there is no definitive answer to whether it should have been awarded as a penalty. Jamie Carragher argued it was, “100%”.
Alan Pardew unsurprisingly said the referee, Andre Marriner, was wrong. After viewing the incident via numerous replays, two former Premier League referees, Mark Halsey and Graham Poll, held opposing views of the incident in their newspaper columns.
It goes to show there will always be incidents that are far from clear-cut. The Benteke penalty on Sunday was particularly timely in this regard, coming the day after the International FA Board announced plans for a two-year trial of video technology to help referees, to start no later than the 2017-18 season. The provisional plan would, in effect, mean the referee would clarify an original decision via a headset with another official, hunched over a screen in a dark room. If there is still uncertainty, the referee will have a look on a tablet device on the side of the pitch.
If this testing is successful, there could be video technology to decide the outcome of four defined “game?changing” scenarios – when a goal has been scored, penalty decisions, sendings-off and possible cases of mistaken identity – in the Premier League by 2019 and the Football Association has said it is keen to trial it in the FA Cup from 2017.
If that sounds awful, football should be a game of opinions, of momentum. Controversy is so often what makes talking about the game enjoyable. Who wants to talk about which corner Benteke scored his penalty in? But “did you see Pardew’s eyes popping out of his head in the post?match interview?!” “Yeah!”
There is a brilliant sadism in inflicting unmerited heartbreak, as there is a child-like joy in being lucky rather than deserving. Video technology may make an official’s life a bit easier, or even prevent a manager from being sacked, but what about the 60,000?plus people in the stands (and millions at home) waiting for Marriner to remember the passcode to his iPad?
Some people point to the use of video technology in tennis and cricket but these decisions are absolute: if a ball bounced outside a tramline or pitched outside leg. Fans of these sports will tolerate perhaps a minute of necessary faff – a bowler’s walk back to his mark, Rafael Nadal mopping his brow at the end of each point – for a few precious seconds of action. It is similar in the NFL, equally enthralling and frustrating in its stop-start nature, where a match can last more than three hours but have only 15 minutes of play. Rugby union, perhaps closest to football in terms of the fluidity of the game and the subjectivity of the referee’s decisions, continues to have its rhythm blighted by the television match official. Football would be better off copying rugby’s attitude towards referees, not its flawed video review system.
Football has enough stoppages – there is an average of about an hour’s play during a match in Europe’s top five leagues (2014’s World Cup games clocked only 57.6 minutes) – and we do not need any more. Goalline technology has proved successful because it is reliable, definite and does not obstruct the game. The same cannot be said for all four of the defined “game-changing” scenarios.
Pierluigi Collina, the head of Uefa referees, has welcomed the changes but holds reservations about how some decisions may be implemented. “For example, the intensity of a push or what counts as a punishable handling offence can be interpreted differently whether in real time or on video,” he said. “It’s best we don’t kid ourselves that this will magically fix everything.”
Ifab’s proposals need a serious revision if they are to become a reality. Video technology has its place to help referees be more informed but should be applied only to binary yes-or-no incidents. As for the rest of it, keep the subjectivity and the controversy, enjoy the relentless pace and endure the mistakes. It is what makes the game great.