The Thankless Ones

There can be no more thankless job in the world than umpiring/referring big time sports (college and professional). When you do a good job, there is little praise -- and often these days, a series of prima donnas like Kobe Bryant and Derrick Fischer that berate you endlessly anyway. When you make a mistake, the fans scream at you, the television play the error over and over again (sometimes for days) with the benefit of multiple angles and slow motion, and you might even get death threats.

But something has to be said about how bad the referring has been in the World Cup. The second game of the tournament led some to believe it mght be the opposite, after a clever offsides call turned out to be right (the second defender rule that most of us never think about because of the goalie). In any case, since then we have seen one bad call after another. Obviously are the two terrible calls against the United States, who still advanced and won the Group (the first infamous ghost foul by the U.S. against Slovenia, the other now forgotten bad offsides call on a goal by Demsey against Algeria). But there were also several questionable reds including against Australia's Tim Cahill and Germany's star Klose, as well as against Nigeria in a game that probably kept them from advancing. There was a ridiculous double hand ball goal by Brazil against Ivory Coast, the flop by De Rossi in Italy v. New Zealand that led to a tying penalty and countless other minor offenses.

Now we enter the elimination round where these errors can be profound. And while the missed hand ball by a South Korean defender yesterday turned out not to matter, both games today were changed by terrible calls. In the England game, a strike by Lampart was clearly in the goal but missed by all the referees. The goal would have equalized the game in the first half and probably made for a must better second half. While Germany ultimately won 4-1, the last two were on breakaways that probably wouldn't have happened but for the necessity of England pushing for the equalizer. Now in Argentina versus Mexico, the refs miss one of the more obvious offsides calls I've ever seen. Argentina probably would have won anyway, but the truth is Mexico was looking good until that point and you never know.

Hockey was smart enough to introduce goal line technology a few years ago to eliminate errors of this nature. It is time for FIFA to join the times and do so as well. At minimum, they need to use replay for the goal line, maybe for offsides and potentially for terrible calls on goals like the two disqualified U.S. goals and the missed offsides that gave Argentina 1-0. Otherwise we will continue to see blown calls like this that arguably decide games. I still think the worst call in the history of sports happened at the 1988 Olympics, when Roy Jones lost one of the most lopsided victories in boxing history (to a South Korean boxer in South Korea); though the infamous ending to the 1972 basketball gold game is close. In football, the "hand of god" goal by Maradona probably takes the cake, though they might disagree in any given English pub tonight.