World Cup and Maybe How it Should be More Like Hockey

I promised a post, and it’s been less than a week since it ended so I guess I better get on it soon, otherwise we’ll have all forgotten about the whole thing.

I suppose one of the most talked about things this year seems to have been the absence of video replay, especially since we’re at a point where the technology could have a conclusive decision faster than the way it is now with the players mobbing and arguing with a ref, as any player trying to argue a replay call would most definitely find themselves with a card pretty much immediately.

The argument FIFA has against this is that it would slow the game down, and the counter argument is “no it wouldn’t.”  I think the truth is that they’re both right.  If the feed going out to the world can show that England did indeed score on Germany while the players are still arguing that means the refs could have looked at it and seen the result and had complete certainty.  The problem becomes what do you put replay on because I also don’t think you can argue that holding up a game to check whether there really was contact or if the guy was diving wouldn’t slow things down, and what if the ref’s original call was “no contact, keep playing” but he looks back and finds out it’s wrong?  Do you turn the clock back and discount stuff that’s happened?  You just can’t go to the video replay for every offside and foul in a game, as that really would slow the game down.

The best answer to this problem seems to be to be to look at the NHL.  I may say that partially because I’m Canadian, and a much bigger fan of hockey than pretty much any other professional sport.  There could also be other leagues with rules like this, but I don’t know them so this is what I have.  It’s simply that video replay is only used to determine whether a goal is good or not.  Penalties are not watched on replay, but the league can punish you after the game with things like suspensions so even if you get away with it in game, that doesn’t mean you get away with it completely, and that is also a system I would support in Soccer, if replay after the game finds him diving, then do something like start him off with a yellow card in his next game (or give him a 1 game suspension or something, but then again practically these two things would probably be the same, why would the coach start you in a game with a card when he can put someone else in without a substitution).  So if we only allow replay to be used (real time) on goals, problem solved right?  I’d say not quite.

What if the player got the ball, and shot immediately, but was offside?  Well replay is used for determining if the ball went in via legal means (ie. no handball) and while play was still going (by the way, even in the NHL where they do use video replay, that goal the US got screwed out of still wouldn’t have counted, the whistle went before the ball was in, and whether it goes in or not after the whistle it doesn’t matter, play’s over, video replay wouldn’t have fixed that problem) not whether a player is offside or not.  However, it seems really obvious that you shouldn’t count a goal if the player was offside.  What if he was offside in the middle of the field and ran in on a break away, I’d say that’s different than if it happened very quickly inside the 18 yard box.  What if the shooter was onside, but it got passed to him by someone offside?  You’d have to draw a line somewhere, but then every time something happened that was near that line we’d have pretty much the same controversy we have now without that line.

The other thing about cameras, especially high-speed cameras is that they’re not cheap.  The 2010 world cup was also a lot more than a month long tournament in South Africa, it’s been going on since 2008, and been played all over the world, the tournament we just saw was merely the last stage (that’s why you can use the term “world cup finals” to describe all that happened in South Africa, not just Spain vs. Holland), and when we put it into that perspective cost of cameras could be an issue.  I think it would be hard to deny that one of the main reasons soccer has become so popular is that all you need to play are the people, a ball and a place to play, and no matter where in the world you are, and no matter how poor that’s something you can manage.

Sure at the higher level, the place you play needs to be measured out better and more exact, and there’s also travel costs, but imagine you are one of FIFA’s smaller members, only barely able to put a team together and afford to send them to play, I’m sure it happens.  Well now we’re asking them to potentially add thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of equipment (plus ways to prevent it from being damaged or stolen) to a field that an island with 100 000 people on it want to play their games.  I agree that for most nations these cameras won’t be prohibitively expensive, but for some they could be, and I’d say that that is bad for the game.  I guess you could say then that the cameras only need to be used during the finals themselves and save others some money, however, then I would know you’re not from Ireland (by the way look up France vs. Ireland if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

The fact is that no matter what happens there will always be bad calls somehow and when your team is on the wrong side of things it’s going to be upsetting to you.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to improve the system, but, the overall benefit compared to the cost (and I don’t just mean money here) however seems to not really be in favour of cameras right now.  Personally I think if something is done to the game, some level of rework to some rules to make the game more interesting should be considered.

This could again be a hockey fan saying what he really wants to watch is hockey so other sports should become more like it, but I’d still say this is worth thinking about.  Back before the lockout the NHL was running into a little bit of a problem with games not being very interesting.  Some teams would play super-defensively and only go for things like a 1-0 win, and that worked well, so if you were to put the best teams together to play each other instead of getting a high paced game full of exciting moments you would see a lot of control, a lot of passing, and almost no offensive pushing at all.  That’s not to say they weren’t highly skilled, and it could be interesting to watch, but gets boring after a while because all the games have the same slow pace.

The NHL said “hey this is no good” and have changed rules in order to up the pace of the game and make it more exciting.  I’m not trying to say more goals is necessarily better, there’s few sports I can think of that would be more boring than basket ball, however when scoring is easier it means one goal isn’t enough, you need to know that they could score so you better go for another.  The other way to see it is that the team that plays worse, but gets a fluke goal is less likely to win.  Sure if you’re the better team you can still lose, and even if it’s still a one goal difference it’s hard to say that a team that wins a game 3-2 doesn’t at least somehow deserve the win more than a team that wins 1-0, as although one fluke goal is possible when you’re being out-played, something like 3 is just not going to happen.  As for where they could start with soccer rules changes, I’d say do something about making it easier to get past the defenders without being offside, and also maybe something more (possibly even unlimited substitutions) to keep the player energy levels on the field high.  They could even have an official who part of his job is to make sure no one goes on the field without someone coming off, but allow it anytime not during a play stoppage.  You could even solve both of these problems by making defenders switch off back near their own goal, so if you get caught on a bad change then the offense has plenty of space without being offside.