Why FIFA was right to ignore the pleas for goal line technology - where would it end?

By Darren Lewis

Published 09:54 09/03/10

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We as a society have an obsession with the quick fix.

Everything we want, we get. Nobody wants to wait. Why bother watching TV at home when you can watch it on your phone in the park? Why diet when you can get a tummy tuck?

We've got fast food and one-hour photos. We have football fans all over the country desperate for a billionaire foreign investor - the next Roman Abramovich - to come in and turn their club into the next Chelsea or Manchester City.

And now English football is stamping its feet like a child that cannot get what it wants because FIFA have rejected calls for goal-line technology.

English football is desperate take out the margin for error that has existed since the game began. The majority want to make the sport an exact science.

The debate has raged long and hard ever since you or I can remember. And you've heard all the arguments in favour:

"It would improve the game. It could be the difference between someone being relegated or staying up. It won't slow the game down, just look at cricket, tennis and rugby".

The trickle has turned into a steady flow since FIFA closed the door on the idea on Saturday afternoon.

And yet I have to say I agree with world football's governing body. I really do. Yes there have been a few minor changes to the game over the years but I just cannot bring myself to back something as radical as goal line technology.

In fact, the growing number of the masses lambasting FIFA because of their refusal to implement it has only serves to make my opinion more entrenched than ever.

Dont get me wrong. I saw the Liam Ridgewell incident on Saturday. The ball was over the Portsmouth line in their FA Cup quarter-final win over Birmingham and I still remember the Pedro Mendes incident when, as a Spurs player, his speculative shot landed a foot over the line against Manchester United.

But for me it would be the start of a slippery slope. The insistence within the game is that it would just be for goal line decisions and nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.

But you know as well as I do that, should it work, then the same people that have been banging on about bringing it in now will be back on their hobby horses again to get it extended (for anyone living in London think the Congestion Charge Zone).

Those same people will be asking why we don't use technology for free-kicks, corners, penalty decisions (especially if we as a nation were to be knocked out of a major tournament after not getting one) and anything else you care to mention.

In fact, over the last 48 hours - as the TV stations have shown the views of managers up and down the country debating the issue - they have already been screening Thierry Henry's handball to help France into the World Cup - rather than the any of the goal line examples that I've already mentioned.

And that's the point. If technology works then it will be extended all over the pitch eventually and then what would be the point of referees? Why not just have a bloke sitting in front of a TV with a buzzer beside him that he can press if he spots any kind of infringement? I could go on and of course I am being ever-so-slightly facetious but that is the direction in which the game would go.

I remember when managers used to slam the transfer system as being a free-for-all before the introduction of the January and summer window. Back then bosses would hit out because if any of their players was doing particularly well another, bigger club could just unsettle him then spirit him away mid-season without so much as a bye-your-leave.

Now that the window is with us we have the same old gripes and grumbles about how it doesn't work and that is needs to be changed.

Yet the truth is, football has never been satisfied and it never will be.  Eventually, when Sepp Blatter is long gone and technology is finally shoe-horned in, there will STILL be the core of complainers who think the game is out of touch.

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