Upon further review, Marcelo Zalayeta won’t be suspended

The lingering furor from Juventus’ match against Napoli on Saturday is interesting on a few levels. You have a club that has been involved with its fair share of fixed matches crying foul over the referee’s performance during Napoli’s 3-1 win. You also have the usual call for video replays whenever a referee blows a decision. Critics of using video to review the decisions of referees point out that it will slow the game down and that it would be difficult to administer without turning soccer into something like a stand-and-wait American football game. What you don’t often hear is the argument that video evidence itself can be misleading.

That has turned out to be the case in the diving incident involving Napoli’s Marcelo Zalayeta. After watching the initial video replays, Serie A officials slapped him with a two-game ban for his theatrics. A just punishment if you just watch the play from that angle.

But it turns out there was more to the play than was captured on that camera. The video above shows Juventus defender Nicola Legrottaglie tugging on Zalayeta’s shirt before his swan dive over keeper Gianluigi Buffon. The same play leads to two different conclusions when viewed through two different cameras. As a result of the new video evidence, Zalayeta has had his ban overturned.

This points to an issue that I hadn’t ever really thought of before. Is video evidence really reliable and would it be practical to implement this throughout the soccer world? There were lots of cameras at the Napoli-Juventus game, but what happens when it is teams that are playing in a lower division and there aren’t multiple video angles? What happens when the evidence points to something that isn’t a penalty?

What would happen is that mistakes would occur, just like they do when humans are involved.

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Category: Serie A, World Football