Blattered but not Broken

Sepp Blatter has been conspicuous by his absence since Sunday afternoon. Calls for his resignation, or at least a reconsideration of his ridiculous policy not to allow goal line technology to be introduced in international competition, have been legion.

His arguments - that football is "a human game that contains human mistakes" - sound like something you'd hear in an Amish community hall. Tennis too, is a human game, but the number of human errors has been greatly reduced with the use of HawkEye electronic line judging to supplement - not replace - its human counterparts, and avoid the kind of glaring error of judgement or momentary lapse in concentration that marred Sunday's England v Germany fixture. Cricket too has seen HawkEye deployed to assist the umpires. So why is football - the most ubiquitous game on the planet and a multi-billion-dollar industry - kept in the dark ages by a ruling body who remain inexpicably and embarrassingly unmoved by two examples of refereeing incompetence in a single dismal day.

Closing your eyes, ears and heart to the march of technology in the name of keeping the game "pure" is like saying that writers should continue to use quill pens, or DNA evidence can't be used in criminal law, or policemen should continue to rely on whistles and truncheons, eschewing radios, tazers and patrol cars. Technological advances are there to help humans achieve their highest ambitions, not replace them.

It's simply beyond belief that we even have to have the debate. The correct decision is so obvious. I'm not saying we would have won if the half-time scoreline had been, correctly, 2-2. But there can be no doubting that the decision to disallow a perfectly good equaliser took the wind out of England's sails. Even though they were outclassed for most of the game by a fitter, younger and far hungrier German side, we had already proved we could score 2 to match their 2, and the demoralising effect of having one of those two snatched away simply because the officials could not do their jobs properly should not be underestimated. At least, if we're going to get totally slaughtered, let's have the scoreline reflecting the number of goals actually scored.