Tournament News
FIFA still silent on blunders
2010-06-28 12:26
Johannesburg - FIFA has refused to comment on Monday on mistakes made by World Cup match
officials that contributed to the elimination of England and Mexico.
VIDEO: Lampard's goal not given
VIDEO: Tevez scores from an offside position
The
governing body of world football did not send any officials with
responsibility for referees to its daily briefing despite widespread
furor over Sunday's errors.
FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot
faced hostile questioning, but said he was not competent to discuss
decisions by referees or football's rules-making panel, which has
rejected introducing video technology that would help match officials.
"We obviously will not open any debate," Maingot said. "This is obviously not the place for this."
Television
replays from both Sunday's matches quickly showed that England was denied a goal against
Germany when Frank Lampard's shot bounced down from the crossbar and
over the goal line.
Uruguayan referee Jorge Larrionda waved
away the 38th-minute non-goal, which would have leveled the game at
2-2. Germany went on to win 4-1.
Later, Argentina's
first goal in a 3-1 win against Mexico was scored by Carlos Tevez from
an offside position but was allowed by Italian referee Roberto Rosetti
after he consulted his assistant. Mexico players protested to the match
officials after seeing replays on a stadium giant screen which showed
the infringement.
Former Netherlands great Johan Cruyff joined the debate on Monday in support of goal-line technology to help referees.
"Cameras
in the goal are fine," Cruyff wrote in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf,
"but if you also link that to offside decisions it gets tricky."
FIFA
president Sepp Blatter, who attended both games, strongly
opposes introducing any video technology to help referees.
"Let
it be as it is and let's leave football with errors," Blatter said
after video experiments were halted at a March 2008 meeting of the
rules panel, the International Football Association Board.
"Other
sports regularly change the laws of the game to react to the new
technology. We don't do it and this makes also the fascination and the
popularity of football."
The voting structure for decisions by
IFAB, which comprises FIFA and the four British national federations,
means FIFA can block any proposal.
The 2008 meeting rejected
the Hawk-Eye system which is used in tennis to judge line calls. The
football version used 12 cameras around the stadium to determine the
ball's position over the goal line and send a message to the referee.
The subject was debated again last March and rejected.
Blatter
said then that video technology was too expensive to apply worldwide,
would break up the flow of games and was not always conclusive.
"No matter which technology is applied, at the end of the day a decision will have to be taken by a human being," Blatter said.
World
Cup referees are scheduled to meet the media on Tuesday at their training
base near Pretoria, but are forbidden to discuss their own or
colleagues' match decisions.
At a previous media session last
Monday, referees who made disputed calls at this World Cup, including
Koman Coulibaly of Mali and Stephane Lannoy of France, did not attend.
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Associated Press writer Mike Corder in Durban contributed to this report.