Michel Platini Wants to Give Refs Extra Eyes

By: Daryl | January 17th, 2008

Lino Not literally. He’s not planning some weird bionic implants. But with so much at stake in seemingly every football match, there’s a definite clamour for goal-line technology. Either “intelligent” balls that know when they’ve crossed the line or maybe NFL style video replay. So Platini and UEFA are combatting all that by kicking it old school, with a plan to reinforce the original form of video – known as looking – with two extra assistant referees, one at each end of the pitch.

The idea is that the new assistant refs would be responsible for deciding whether a ball has crossed the line or not. Sounds like one of those horrible jobs where no-one needs you for hours at a time until suddenly everything depends on your ability to make the correct decision but you weren’t even looking because you were trying to remember the name of the guy who played Fonzy on Happy Days.

But more useful than having one man stare at the goal-line for 90 minutes is that these new assistant refs will each be responsible for patrolling the entire penalty area. And that seems like a good idea to me.

Consider the number of horrible penalty decisions, either given or not, that are caused purely be the referee being unable to see the action clearly. On a corner for example, there are maybe fifteen players jostling around in the penalty area, so it’s an impossible task for a ref to be aware of everything that’s going on. Or when the action breaks from one end to the other, it’s unreasonable to expect a forty-year-old man with a whistle to keep up with Cristiano Ronaldo as he tears off down the pitch.

But having an assistant ref in each penalty area solves all that. It’s a bit like if you live in a crime-ridden are and the police put more officers on the beat. The new assistant refs will be just like linesmen in that they still have to defer to the actual ref at all times, but the added presence theoretically means more eyes and so better decisions. The idea will be given a trial run at youth tournaments (because everyone knows youth tournaments only exist for governing bodies to conduct experiments on) and then Platini and co. will take it from there.

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Category: World Football

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bobby digital

why are these governing entities so hard-headed? there is only one solution and its goal line camera's with instant replay. all another ref will do is create more confusion and turmoil. You think players and fans will just accept what the extra says just because he is a little closer to the action? No they wont. The players will still crowd around, getting in his face. And they will still be the possiblity of human error. The only undisputable thing is a goal line camera.
Ryan

JK, I would imagine that the head ref would have the final say and he would be able to overrule the other referees in the process, which may cut down on the arguments per se.

I think it's a great idea, why not have something that can prevent games being won by non-goals. All of the soccer purists say that it would damage the integrity of the game, but who wants to lose, or even win a game on a terrible goal that should have been disallowed?
jk

Interesting Idea. Although its not as straight forward as saying your give decisions in the penalty area. It does raise a potential for conflict and confusion on decisions.
melef419

not a bad idea, I think.