Move to video reviews no ‘guinea pig experiment’
Excruciating length of delays frustrating fans at World Cup
Italy’s Pierluigi Collina is considered one of the best soccer referees of all time, but he probably would have made a pretty good salesman, as well.
Collina, chairman of the FIFA referees committee, along with head of referee development Massimo Busacca and senior refereeing manager Kari Seitz held a 90-minute media conference on Wednesday at the Parc des Princes to discuss the officiating at the Women’s World Cup.
Officiating has come under scrutiny with the implementation of new rules and the use of video assistant referees for the first time at the tournament.
Collina led a presentation and addressed some of the concerns raised, particularly with VAR and how it’s being implemented. He said the tournament isn’t being used to experiment with new rules as had been suggested by some media outlets.
“We don’t consider this competition a guinea pig experiment,” Collina said. “We used it in the under-20 World Cup for men in Poland, it has been implemented in the Copa America, it has been implemented in the African Cup of Nations and here, so they are implemented in all the competitions.”
The International Football Association Board, the group responsible for formulating the laws of the game, convenes every March to discuss possible changes and those changes are then implemented in June during the international FIFA calendar.
This year’s changes include allowing goal kicks to be played before leaving the penalty area; not allowing attacking players to line up in the defensive wall on a free kick; issuing red and yellow cards to team officials on the bench if necessary; and, on penalty kicks, a goalkeeper must have one foot on the goal-line when the shot is taken and cannot stand behind the line.
The penalty kick law has been strictly enforced at the Women’s World Cup through VAR. Scotland was pushed in a 3-3 tie against Argentina, which cost it a spot in the second round, and France benefited from a review and a retake in a 1-0 win against Nigeria.
It was a decision that even had French fans squirming.
“Honestly, we’ve been a bit surprised because whenever we think of changing something, we analyze the matter,” Collina said.
“At IFAB, there are panels with players with coaches. We discuss with them, and once we find common ground on something shared, we go and make the change.
“If the law always existed but was not respected or enforced by referees (two feet on the line), then we had to change something. We thought we had to make the goalkeepers’ job easier by allowing them to move, so we gave them the possibility to move one step forward, leaving one foot on the goal-line.
“This is the only change we made, and we thought we made the change to make the goalie’s job easier.”
VAR was introduced at the Confederations Cup in 2017, then implemented at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The biggest issue at the Women’s World Cup is the amount of time it takes to make decisions. Games are being delayed for a ridiculous length of time as decisions are scrutinized by VAR officials and referees.
It took four minutes for a penalty call for Canada to be overturned against the Netherlands once it was determined forward Janine Beckie was fouled just outside of the box.
Offside decisions are taking too long to determine, as well. Two of them created an uproar in the England-Cameroon round of 16 contest, during which Cameroon was ready to walk off the field.
“It’s a matter of time versus accuracy,” Collina said. “You can’t be accurate and be fast. This doesn’t mean we are happy to be slow. We are trying to do things very quick, but sometimes you need to check more things.”
The problem for some fans is the game is being unnecessarily delayed.
At what point, however, does it become too much intervention?
In the NBA, it sometimes takes 10 minutes to play the last 2.4 seconds of a game because officials spend so much time huddled over a TV monitor. Is that where FIFA’s top officials want soccer to go?
“I think football has wanted us to be more accurate. They don’t accept the big mistakes, there’s a lot at stake in football,” said Seitz.
Perhaps, but there’s a need to consider the enjoyment of the game, as well.