The Time For Instant Replay Has Come.

By: chris | October 27th, 2008

Italian referees could use some damage control PR today, after managing to royally fuck up two games. In Palermo-Fiorentina, Alberto Gilardino - who is quite hot at the moment so we can maybe forgive their assumptions he’d magically huffed and puffed the ball into the net - scored with what appeared to be his hand. Actually, it was his hand, clear as day (we’ll spare you the obvious puntastic description). An erroneously bad decision which gifted Fiorentina a 1-0 lead en route to a 3-1 victory.

Earlier in the afternoon ’twas Udinese v Roma hit with bad refereeing from both directions. Two penalties called, one for each team, which turned out to actually not be penalties (both converted, so the football gods picked up the slack). There was a play ruled a “dive” in the box, met with a yellow card which subsequently suspended the player for the next game, when the defender pulled a Daniel Larusso leg sweep for a foul. And that’s just the stuff inside the box. If Fior-Palermo was a tale of one incident, this one took care of the quantity end. (Udinese - Roma was a fair result all things considered, not sure about Gila & Co’s win as I was busy sopping up the tears from the early game.)

Yes, a 4-1, 5-2, 6-3 win can obviously rule out some “we wuz robbed” claims, but before these calls decide games, they decide tactics; tactics which can make or break games. Forcing a team built for the counter to push forward due to a piss poor penalty decision can really cause problems when they aren’t designed to press. All it takes is one weakened link for the whole thing to blow right open.

Athletes, as much schtick as they get for their dreamy lives of excess, work very hard to get to this level of sport, and they shouldn’t have that work rendered moot at the hands of someone moonlighting a second job when we have all this wonderfully unnecessary technology available, just waiting to be put to good use. It won’t be as easy as snapping a figure - they’d first have to run the gamut of who, what, when, where, why and how - but it’s about time. After all, we spent an entire major tournament this summer joking about the “offside/non-offside goal of the day”. That was “just” the Euros, and these were “just” Serie A games. How many years too late will it be when this stuff decides a World Cup Final that I’m watching on my 50″ plasma with instant replay technology built into my goddamn remote? Karma can only do so much.