VAR makes Cup bow
Crisis in ME stokes fears of piracy
KAZAN, Russia, June 13, (Agencies): If the strongest advocates of Video Assistant Referees are to be believed, World Cup football will never be the same again after the TV review system makes its debut at the finals on Thursday.
With this one innovation, they believe, contentious refereeing decisions will be a thing of the past, wrongs will be righted and the prospering of cheats brought to an end.
Had VAR been around, goes the thinking, German keeper Toni Schumacher’s assault on France’s Patrick Battiston in 1982 would have been properly punished, while Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal in 1986 would have led only to a direct free kick.
For the opponents of the use of technology, video reviews, particularly of goals, interrupt the natural rhythm of the game as tension builds before being released when the ball hits the back of the net.
Others suggest it brings only confusion where it should bring clarity and some question the technology itself, pointing to some embarrassing failures in leagues around the world which were early adopters.
One such was this year’s ALeague final between Melbourne City and the Newcastle Jets, when the Australian title was decided by a single goal despite three City players being offside in the run-up to it.
Football Federation Australia (FFA) later conceded the VAR had been unable to review the footage from the relevant camera because of a software glitch.
FIFA, while accepting the technology is not yet perfect, believe it has this eventuality covered by the sheer number of feeds the VAR and his assistants will have at their disposal in their Moscow bunker some 37 during the knockout stages.
When Saudi Arabia play host nation Russia in the World Cup’s opening match Thursday, millions of Saudi soccer fans may have no choice but to use illegal means to watch their team because of an ongoing diplomatic crisis.
With just a day to go before kickoff, Saudi authorities have yet to strike a deal with Qatar’s beIN Media, which holds broadcasting rights to all 64 World Cup matches for the Middle East and North Africa. The lack of an agreement is hardly surprising, given that Saudi Arabia and a few other Arab countries have severed ties with Qatar and imposed a blockade on the tiny gas-rich nation for the past year.
State-owned broadcaster beIN is a spinoff of Al Jazeera, the Qatari news network now banned by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain as part of their blockade. The countries accuse Qatar of supporting extremist groups in the region. Qatar — which, by coincidence, will host the next World Cup, in 2022 — vigorously denies the allegation.
FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, has reportedly been trying to broker a $35 million deal between beIN and the Saudi sports authority for rights to 22 matches, including the opening and closing matches and all games played by the Saudi team. But so far no agreement has been reached.
Bloomberg reported that indirect negotiations were held last week in Zurich, Switzerland, between FIFA officials and Saudi sports authority chief Turki Al Alshikh, who was quoted as saying that “Saudi Arabia has shown good faith.” But beIN said in a statement that “preliminary discussions” through FIFA intermediaries had yet to yield a deal.
An 11th-hour agreement has indeed been reached, however, with Emirati telecom Etisalat to carry the games in the UAE, beIN has announced.
The rift between beIN and Saudi Arabia over World Cup rights has been exacerbated by the fact that, in recent months, several pirate satellite channels insultingly called beoutQ have pilfered premium live sports content from the beIN feed and made it available to Saudi viewers. Decoders and smart cards to access this content are being sold in Saudi Arabia.
Constantinos Papavassilopoulos, an analyst with IHS Market, said that during the tournament the Saudis will “basically be stealing the beIN World Cup satellite feed and superimposing ‘beoutQ’ on the beIN logo.” He noted that the diplomatic blockade against Qatar had delivered a big financial blow to beIN Media, causing the company to lose access to 40% of its subscriber base. Saudi Arabia was its largest market, with close to 900,000 subscribers.
BeIN has reported the beoutQ pirate channels to FIFA and to panArab satellite operator Arabsat, in which Saudi Arabia is the largest shareholder. But “Arabsat has not done anything to remove those pirate channels from its satellite feeds,” Papavassilopoulos said, and FIFA can do little about it.