In one respect – video assistance for referees – football is lucky to have had Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini. Because the game’s rulers have been so conservative for so long, there has been the chance to learn from the mistakes of other sports, as chaotically demonstrated by rugby’s World Cup.
This afternoon, football’s rulemakers meet at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington for their annual business meeting and will discuss a move to a proper trial of video assistance for referees.
I pray that the members of IFAB will have been watching rugby union’s showpiece, for the great fault among sporting administrators is overcomplication.
A perfect example was the offside given against Scotland when on the brink of victory over Australia in the quarter-finals. Referee Craig Joubert got it wrong, and appeared to suspect as much, but felt unable to consult with the TMO because regulations stated it should be used only in defined situations, of which this was not one.
The point is that such a potentially beneficial change for football has to be designed with elegance.
The four British associations have generous representation on IFAB, and the FA are pushing for an experiment. They hope it will be licensed at IFAB’s annual meeting in March and went to the Royal Garden with the results of a consultation process completed yesterday.
Naturally – for it involved “key stakeholders’’ – neither you nor I nor even the Football Supporters’ Federation were included. But the Leagues, and their clubs, and the players and managers’ associations, were asked which decisions – red cards, penalties, offside – should be subject to review, and whether delay should be countenanced.
But if you have the minimum of regulation there is less to go wrong. Just relieve the fourth official of his number-board duties and take him somewhere quiet where he can watch television and advise the referee, by earpiece, whenever one or other deems it necessary. There would be no more delay than now. It would be pure and simple, like good football.
