Goal-line Technology - The Debate Rages On

Geoff Hurst's second goal in England's victorious World Cup Final of 1966, Pedro Mendez's long range pot-shot spilt by the red-faced Roy Carroll at Old Trafford the lino failed to pick up on. Reading's frankly ridiculous goal at Watford last year, Freddie Sears' effort that hit the stanchion and bounced back out at Ashton gate which sparked outrage from the ever-lovable Neil Warnock...goals change games and history (or not in some cases!).

Bad refereeing decisions are one thing (I'll get to why I think our referees aren't up to standard and why that is at a later time), but whether or not the whole of a football has crossed a white line or not is black and white (green if I'm being particularly anal), is it not? Football is the greatest game on the planet, but as the quality (and pace as a result) of the game increases, the technology being used continues to lag seriously behind. Cricket has Hawkeye, an excellent proven system for judging the flight of the ball and whether or not it would have hit the stumps in LBW appeals, rugby has video-refs and football has...stupid-looking walky talky headsets as modelled expertly by Mr Pedantic himself, Rob Styles.

Various pundits, managers, officials and governing bodies alike have agreed that in the 21st Century, these poor levels of accuracy and lack of common sense through implementation of new systems are unacceptable. Even England's chief of the Professional Game Match Officials Board Keith Hackett has called for technology to be introduced, saying: "I think the major issue centres around the fact that for a number of years PGMOB have been calling for goal-line technology to be introduced. In fairness the Premier League worked with Hawkeye to achieve a product that the Premier League wanted to put into an operation as an experiment with the full support of the Football League, FA, LMA and PFA. All the parties were in favour, but at the international board meeting in Gleneagles a year ago, FIFA and Sepp Blatter decided the experiment could not go ahead."

Hackett's comments with regards to FIFA are concerning given that the game's governing body are supposed to be the ones with football's best interests at heart, and unfortunately this appears to be nothing new - just ask Guus Hiddink. Hiddink of course recently spent a period in charge at Chelsea and saw his then employers denied a clear goal against Juventus in the Champions League by a lack of technology. Hiddink stated that "technology must be used on this - then there won't be a dispute, it's a yes or no. We did it with Phillips in my very early days at PSV in the 80's and it worked really well. But the people who were deciding didn't want to know and that was 20 years ago. Now I think the technology is so perfect that, for me, it must be done."

So wait a minute, Phillips tried to develop this a 5th of a century ago back in the days when Manchester United fans thought that Sir Alex Ferguson was useless, Margaret Thatcher was in power and the Berlin Wall still stood yet during a period where so much change (much of it good) has happened, FIFA have chosen to remain in the stone age? I find this rather absurd and frankly extremely concerning when I come to the realisation that these clowns are entrusted with the future of the game.

Right, mini-rant over...so which technology or new systems should be used?

Potential Systems

Extra officials: UEFA have trialled the addition of two extra officials (one at either goal) in the Europa League (UEFA Cup for those who can't keep up with the annual faffing around, re-naming and re-formatting process Michel Platini seems to have become obsessed with). The idea is that this will solve the problem whereby a linesman is unable to keep up with play in order to make a decision if there's a long shot (a la Mendez at Old Trafford) which crosses the line.

This is all well and good in my opinion, but just as referees can make mistakes and fail to see what's right in front of them (hey, we can't all see everything and be perfect), this system is still open to human error and the officials still only have a split second to make a decision in some cases. What people tend to forget is that the WHOLE ball has to be over the goal-line, not some or most of it, and this is often harder than it seems to pick out, especially at high speed. You have to allow for things such as goalkeepers diving and in some cases obstructing the officials' view of the ball - I was watching an NHL game the other night (granted, an ice hockey puck is a lot smaller and harder to spot, but the principle is still there) and there was an instance where the goalie fell on top of the puck. Even though it appeared that he'd saved the goal and this was deemed to be the case, it was still impossible to tell 100% as his pad was covering the puck and it could have been at the top (outside the goal) of his pad or the bottom (in the goal).

A third disadvantage of UEFA's trialled system involves its influence on play itself. Recently I was lucky enough to watch a game at Wembley in the top tier and some may be aware that they have a camera there which is suspended from the roof. Obviously it has nothing to do whatsoever with the outcome of the game, it is just there to observe and record, but when the ball was played from one end to another, I (and others around me, I made sure I wasn't cracking up!) often got distracted by it as it often appeared as if there was a defender playing someone onside or an attacker who was unmarked. The relevance of this is that the extra officials on the pitch are at the side of the goal and this could throw the goalkeeper and defenders a bit as they might be drawn to their movement with officials moving in and out of their blind spots. It is for these three reasons that I don't believe that UEFA'S new method is the best way to move forwards.

Video Technology: As I mentioned to begin with, sports such as rugby deploy a video ref system whereby the game is stopped when contentious incidents take place and video evidence is examined during a short delay in play, before a decision is made. The idea in football would be for the referee (or alternatively an official in the stands) to look at a camera angle from level with the goalposts and determine whether or not the ball had crossed the line.

To begin with this would seem to be an excellent idea - referees being given perfect evidence with which to extract a decision from...but is this really perfect? The ice hockey 'was it? wasn't it?' debate springs to mind here and often on TV, pundits take a look at 3 or 4 different angles of an incident and are still arguing among themselves as to whether or not it was a goal. Football is a brilliant sport to watch, and much of that is due to the way in which it tends to flow as a spectacle and I feel that this has the potential to affect it. Large delays in play could kill momentum as teams push for a late goal and give defenders chance to rest and detract from the action, dampening the 'live experience' for supporters in the process.

Thinking further into the future, I also fear that the introduction of video replays now could escalate into it being used for EVERY slightly contentious incident such as mistimed tackles, offsides and so forth, which would completely kill the game in my eyes. Games could potentially take hours upon hours to complete and that's even assuming that the appropriate time is added on. As it is referees appear to struggle with regards to timekeeping and I would worry that we'd lose even more time in terms of the ball being 'in play' if this was introduced without proper consideration and control devices.

I guess that means another no from me then!

Computer Chips/Adidas Teamgeist 2: This is perhaps the most interesting thing I have investigated. Basically FIFA and other footballing bodies had looked into the idea of a computer chip system whereby chips would be inserted into the goalposts and also different parts of a football. The idea is that if all the chips in the ball pass through the 'field' between the two goalposts then all of the ball must be over the line, meaning that a goal must have occurred. I suppose you could look at it sort of like the laser beam anti-theft traps in films (Ocean's Eleven springs to mind here) where an alarm is triggered if an object passes through them, except the only things able to set the alarm off here would be the chips in the ball. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

This technology was trialled at the World Club Championships in 2007 and was thought to be FIFA's preferred approach to solving the goal-line issue - Adidas were working in partnership with scientists and FIFA to develop this further in order to ensure it was 100% accurate and workable, but FIFA then moved away from the idea last year. This was a decision which was opposed by many top level clubs across Europe who voiced their concern that this could spell the end for goal-line technology and also that it would be a step backwards.

To me it seems very strange that FIFA have invested a lot of money, time and effort into an idea which seemed very promising and easy to implement at the expense of putting more bodies onto a football pitch, leading to the potential for over-complication. One point which football's governing body raised was that the Teamgeist 2 technology with goalposts might not be financially viable at the grass roots level of our game (but is the five-man officials system viable either given the decline in the number of referees as it is?!). I personally find this rather bewildering as you don't see video refs for park rugby or Hawkeye being used for Sunday league cricket, yet either sport does not seem to have collapsed!

The difference of course at the top level is the money at stake with millions and millions of Pounds being decided over split seconds, which surely increases the need for something to be done? Of course it's upsetting coming into work on a Monday morning having lost to your mates thanks to a dodgy decision, but could you imagine being denied a place in history or a new house by such a thing, (some people might call it a disgrace and even go as far as launching a tirade at a TV camera, but I personally think that's a bit much) isn't it a bit different?

The Verdict

I think FIFA are seriously missing a trick by holding back on the computer chip/magnetic technology. This could potentially eliminate the problem once and for all and wouldn't delay the game at all - surely it would be the perfect solution for everyone involved? The only doubt I would have over this would be the durability of the technology in terms of robustness given how hard a football can be struck (a Roberto Carlos free-kick perhaps) - could this knock the chips out of place or damage them? That said, we've managed to put a man on the Moon and invent beer so surely this is achievable?

Once again I look forward to hearing your comments...