I love the world cup. If I lived in a city with a soccer team, and tickets and beer were reasonable, I’d go to a game or two.
But sweet Jesus, can Fédération Internationale de Football Association, better known as FIFA, bring the game into the modern world?
Once upon a time on an NBA basketball court where players could literally brawl with an entire team, two pairs of eyeballs tried to see everything, and failed miserably. BTW see Willis Read decimating the entire 66-67 Lakers in one game and probably playing in the next one for reference to the brawling thing. After about 25 years of ineptitude, the NBA realized that with ten freakishly athletic pituitary giants buzzing about a rectangle 90 by 50 feet, two officials wouldn’t cut it.
The rulers of the NBA (All white, all very, very rich, and mostly, let’s be honest, happy assholes.) decided to pay for a third official. Now fans only endure half as many bad calls per game. See? Progress.
FIFA maintains the fiction that one guy on a pitch of 105 meters by 68 meters can see everything on the field. Why did I just use meters for one and feet for the other measurement you ask? I’m an American, we’re only a third of the way metric. I know the ref’s receive assistance from two on the sidelines, but c’mon FIFA no one person can see everything, be everywhere on a field so fucking huge.
I know they’ve added VAR to help the refs out on offsides and such. I think VAR stands for Video Assisted Review. As if a sporting review would be anything else but something you look at? Would some other league have their review system based on sound and echolocation? By the way, echolocation works so well bats snatch mosquitoes out of the night. Eating mosquitoes must suck.
But I digress once again from my silly point. Redundantly, even.
Back to the greedy motherfuckers who run FIFA and will peddle the World Cup, the most prized prize in all the world’s beautiful game, to any dictator with the money to bribe them.
How much more would it cost your bazillion dollar extravaganza to have another ref on the pitch? I think the bottom line wouldn’t be hurt that much.
And, what the hell is it with football at all levels and the halfway kind of running time that rules football? There’s no commitment here. Either leave the clock running through all the stoppages due to the players protesting their deeply held belief that they were injured on the tackle, and the only remedy is a yellow card, or just stop the clock.
This is not a hard thing to do. Accurate enough clocks have existed for about two hundred years that would do the job.
But no. The ref, the same one making some calls from less-than-prime positions because there’s just one of them, keeps track of how much time should be added. They do this while dealing with players yelling and writhing on the ground for ridiculous amounts of time in an attempt to get a free kick or a blessed yellow card on an opponent.
Or just, in a game where people run like 7 miles, players gaming the system for a little breather.
The amount of stoppage time added by the refs to each half is just extravagantly imaginative. In some games, seven minutes of stoppage time seemed just right. While others saw four minutes for basically the same game. Stoppage time is always some full minute, never something like six minutes and thirty seconds.
Stoppage time and imaginative approximation are synonymous.
I got a stopwatch on my phone. I’m sure that FIFA has enough cash to give each ref their own silver stopwatch with FIFA’s name and logo engraved on it. Perhaps they could just spring for modern ones that link to the scoreboard so everyone would know how much fucking time is remaining.
Hell, I’m sure FIFA could afford to pay for a timing official.
Loosen up the wallet FIFA and, concurrently, dive into the modern world.
And while you’re at it, give the coaches a timeout so the players can rest without having to fake injuries to do it. Football’s a beautiful game but these guys are terrible actors.
Hello. And Bye.