“Cheating” vs “Not cheating if you get away with it”: It’s cheating if it is in your mind to do so. (IMHO, of course!)
amanset, thanks. I had not even considered that! 
Let’s see what happens.
Thanks
Q
FIFA can, and they have (cite). There was a replay of the world cup qualification between Bahrain and Uzbekistan (I only know this because the Irish cited it in their request for a replay) after a wrong decision by the refs in that match.
This might sound like a stupid question from a stupid American, but why doesn’t soccer have instant replay?
For our friend Diogenes, who is NOT stupid, and who poses a very valid question:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601079&sid=aKdpLtJ5fXok
You have got to be kidding me! IR takes away the “spontaneity of the game”???
And as I always say, either we’re ALL stupid here, or NO ONE is. Which is it? 
Quas’
It was, however, exceptionally blatant. I could see it from the stands. Everyone saw it. The linesman had to have seen it. Every Irish player saw it. The French fans saw it. It was an unbelievable miss.
Not a stupid question at all. It should for these types of instances. Rugby manages quite well with instant replay as does American Football. Even fast games like tennis use it.
Well it would depend on what’s expected, no? Different sports have different cultures. In baseball, if an outfielder traps a fly ball against the ground he’s expected to act like he caught it, and if he gets away with it nobody cares. OTOH, in golf, players are expected call penalties on themselves, and they do. I don’t know much soccer, but it *seems *to be somewhere between those two extremes in at least some ways.
I can understand that argument in a one incident, the strike zone, but aside from that I can’t think of any other situation in any sport where it wouldn’t be useful. It’s like saying you don’t want to have your broken arm set in a cast because it takes away the spontaneity of how the bone will heal - but maybe I’m cynical…
I like the tennis/football way of thinking where each coach gets a certain number of challenges in each half (or set for tennis). That way the game doesn’t get bogged down with 738 challenges and things like this situation doesn’t really happen.
Yes, I can understand that nature of soccer is such that it’s anathema to purists to stop game play, and I can also understand that you don’t want to be bogged down with challenges to every little thing, but following the lead of American football by giving each team a very limited number of challenges (like say, one per half for soccer) would allow for egregiously blown calls like this to be remedied and prevent complete travesties.
I think it would make sense if (again, following the lead of American football) the visual evidence had to be indisputable and objective to overturn a call (or non-call) on the field. Obviously, judgement calls, such as intentional flops, should not be challengable, but something like this should have a remedy.
I disagree with the view that most people consider professional fouls not cheating or even “bad”.
30-ish years of watching football has helped me come to this opinion.
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of that one. I was going by FIFA’s insistence that “the referee’s decision is final”.
Curiouser and curiouser.
That is the least stupid question regarding modern football that anyone could come up with.
Sometimes it feels that only Sepp Blatter (head of FIFA) and Michel Platini (head of UEFA) are the only ones against video replays. It gets ridiculous, you have the situation where a referee isn’t sure and there is a great big screen in the stadium showing the incident from several angles and the referee either has to turn away or just try and pretend he never saw the replay.
And cricket spawning a saying that can be used to complain about anything unfair: “it just isn’t cricket”.
It is commonly brought up in discussions regarding football/soccer and video replays as a damn good idea.
Seriously, every time this happens the debate opens up again. It has been analysed, discussed, reanalysed and general just about everything that could be done has been done. N times. Except implement it.
I’m really not joking when I say that it feels like there are only two men in the world against it, one of whom is the most powerful man in football/soccer and the other is arguably the second most powerful.
Forget it Jake, it’s Soccer.
But it appears that was a case of incorrect application of the rules, whereas the current case involves an incorrect judgment call.
Well, my almost as long watching football has allowed me to come to a contrary opinion. When combined with the fact that no one castigates them as commits such fouls in any serious way, I’ll have to take my opinion as supported by the evidence, absent something a bit more weighty than your opinion. :rolleyes:
As for video replay:
As a rule, soccer is not well-suited for replay. The play of the game is flowing, without much in the way of stoppages (substitutions and restarts the only usual stoppages of play, and even restarts don’t stop the clock). A challenge system would be difficult to implement, since there is no guarantee that there will be an appropriate stoppage in a timely fashion to allow review.
The wedge issue on video replay is the question of whether or not the ball has actually wholly crossed the goal line for a goal. If the referee stops play and awards a goal, and there is doubt as to whether or not a goal really occurred, it would be simple enough to delay the restart for a review. If the referee was correct, restart with a kickoff. If the referee was incorrect, restart with a dropped ball at some reasonable location.
But even this is hard to accomplish. What if the ball potentially crosses into the goal, but no goal is awarded? Play continues until such time as their is either a foul or the ball goes out of play. That may be seconds, or it may be a matter of minutes. Do you then go back and review the video replay and award the goal, put time back on the clock, etc.? What if the nightmare occurs: ball potentially across line, no whistle, defenders clear and start a counter-attack which ends up being successful within less than thirty seconds, scoring a goal? Can you imagine the ruckus if they go back, award the original goal, and take everthing that happened after back off the board???
In addition to which, while American football has video reviews, it does NOT allow video review of whether or not a penalty was committed.
Let me repeat that: you don’t get to have the judgment of the officials about the existence of a foul reviewed.
Yet that is exactly what would have to happen here for the video review to have had any effect upon the outcome of the game. The issue here isn’t who touched the ball last, or did it go out of play, or some other factual determination of similar nature. The issue here is: Did or did not Thierry Henry deliberately handle the ball? If so, a foul should have been called. But no sport that I am aware of allows video review to result in the award of a penalty/foul after the fact not called on the field.
So, with respect to all of you who are fulminating about video review, I don’t see that as anything but a red herring here. :dubious:
As for the issue of “cheating”: there are sports where cheating is common and not considered amoral. But imagine this: in the playoffs, with a chance to go to the Stanley Cup finals on the line, during overtime, a player for Team A gloves the puck and, pretending to drop it down and shoot it in, actually throws it into the net. For whatever reason, this is not seen and called, nor is the goal overturned on video review. Do you think that the player would be criticized for his efforts?
I would certainly hope so. Soccer is supposed to be a game with an even higher focus on fair play, though goodness knows you’d never tell from all the flopping, sometimes. :mad:
The two situations are not analogous.
In the 2005 game, the protest was based on the referee making an error in the interpretation of the rules. I won’t recount the incident in detail because the link is a perfect description, but basically the match proceeded from an incorrect application of the rules, not a referee’s call as to what happened on the field. Rules applications can be appealed, and result in a rematch.
In the case of the Ireland-France fiasco, the error was a judgement call as to the play on the field; there was a hand ball and the ref missed it. The Laws of the Game clearly state that judgement calls are final.
Most sports observe this distinction. In baseball, a team can play a game under formal protest if an umpire interprets a rule incorrectly, but not if an ump simply blows a call; so the “Pine Tar Game” could be appealed (and was, successfully) because it hinged upon the application of a rule, not a judgement call, but the various blown judgment calls in the year’s playoffs could not have been protested.
That’s what I thought when I first read about the Bahrain-Uzbekistan game - I just brought it up because 1) the Irish did in their appeal to FIFA; and 2) it is an example of FIFA forcing a replay on two teams by voiding the initial result - which amanset said was impossible.
If we’re talking replay, the way to do it is the way it’s done in American college football, not the pros. College has a replay official in the booth who, theoretically, reviews every single play as it happens. If any of them look fishy, he buzzes down to the ref on the field to stop play so he can take an extra-long look at it.
If you only used replay in soccer in the cases of goals, this would be the simplest thing in the world; since, as we all know, there’s already a one or two minute delay of the game while everyone celebrates and then heads back to the center of the pitch. Just have a replay official in the booth check out each goal as it happens and call down to the ref to let him know if it was good or not. It might not prove to be 100% effective, but it would be very close. For that matter, if you wanted to expand it even farther it could be just as easily used to instantly review any take downs/dives in the box before a penalty gets taken. While everyone on the field is screaming at the ref one way or the other, the replay official can actually take the time to get it right.