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| Goal-line Technology In Football |
In the quest for
fairness in sports, particularly in football, goal-line technology has been
proposed to be used as a modern technology and method to determined if the ball
has completely crossed the goal or not. The ultimate goal of GLT is not to
replace football field officials, but to support them in making fair and
accurate decisions. However, there are have been objections to this technology
– and goal-line technology lies between the absurd and mundane that its feasible
for football is beyond comprehension and reasons.
The primary goal of GLT
is to maintain a uniform decision devoid of debates and refutes between teams
to ensure total confidence on the outcome of the game. According to Abrams (ch.
9), football is a game of brutality and harshness defined in a more legal and
enthusiastic place. Truly, due to the fact that football is an overly
competitive and physical game, keeping it fair and accurate is very important
to avoid escalation of the brutal and violent nature of the game. To this
intent, GLT is conceived. It aims to eliminate, if not reduced, inaccuracies in
decisions of referees to avoid the mentioned negative implications.
However, the drastic
shift of football rules would definitely changed the entire football game. You
cannot just impose something new without its consequences and disadvantages. As
a result, instead of keeping the football game accurate and free from any
violent outburst of players, the situation may
gravitate into something worst due to the change of rules with the
inception of goal-line technology. It must be noted that for players to
understand the entire nature of goal-line technology – and the rules that are
assigned with its introduction – it is necessary for players to play in a field
with the GLT itself. Yet, GLT is not currently installed or placed in team
fields, especially with high school and college footballs.
In the book Sports
Justice: The Law and the Business of Sports, Abrams (ch. 10) described
Terrel Owens, Philadelphia Eagles receiver, as a “person either unwilling or
unable to conduct himself within the bounds of traditional and expected norms”
within the field. And not only Owens got things wrong in the field, many other
football players have big problems with the rules that are put behind their
backs. As much as players are not yet accustomed to their standards rules for
expected norms inside the field, changing these rules for the inception of
goal-line technology might gravitate to worst situations that what we have
already seen.
Union of European Football
Associations President Michel Platini has reservations, if not complete opposition,
to the utilization of goal-line technology in football games. Although he did
not find the technology a completely wrong, he had some questions on how the
technology will on the field. “Where do
you begin with the technology and where do you end with the technology?
Technology is helpful but we have to draw the lines on certain things,” Platini
said. If the technology is allowed to govern and conquer the football game,
what are the rules that must be applied? What are the limits to its usage? At
what part and where can human intervention made? Are decisions of the field
referees above the goal-line technology, or the other way around?
As much as there are several
questions as to the feasibility and operation of the technology, it will result
to what's mentioned earlier – a chaos of changing game or sports rules. In
essence, the ground for decisions will be between the trustworthiness of human
referees or the technology, which will lead to more questions such as “to what
extent the technology can be trusted, as much as to determine if errors are
imminent? (CNN Wire)” To remedy the
situation, FIFA, who just approved the usage of goal-line technology, explained
that they will inspect the technology to ensure functionality after it is being
installed in the stadium, and final installation test will be made to generate
the 100% compliance of the technology. However, we do understand that in any
technology, glitches and problems may happen (because there's no such as 100%
functional and perfect technology), and a football game can put in question.
When these things happen, it does not just affect the result, but also the
action of players, team management, and trust of audiences.
We need to note that even with
the human percentage of error, players and audiences have trusted field
referees of football games, and the arbitration and litigation of field
scenarios do not account more than
management-based and salary-related situations (Abrams, ch. 9). This
simply means that football games have thrived without goal-line technology. As
such refutes and debates over referees' decisions have just made, for FIFA
President Sepp Blatter, creates fanaticism among football audiences who keep on
debating on incidents of the game, which further added human element to the
game (Kelso). Although FIFA has approved goal-line technology, FIFA President
Blatter has always kept his ground that artificial match officials will just
erode the beauty of football games.
Lastly,
we need to understand the enormity of financing goal-line technology. Platini
argued that “to put goal-line technology
in our competitions would cost €50 million in five years” that he prefers “to
give €50m to the grassroots and development in football rather than to put €50m
into technology for perhaps one or two goals per year” which is “a lot of money
per goal.” Truly, the usage of goal-line
technology in major leagues such as Europa League, European Championship and the Champions League will cost much, which is not
feasible and reasonable with consideration that we don't have enough finances
to help “grassroots and development of football.”
The
recent decision of FIFA to introduce goal-line technology just kept the ground
of Platini who said it is better to introduce new field match officials than to
spend for the technology. Indeed, we can spend more for new officials – we can
even add ten or more if we want to – lesser than if we spend for goal-line
technology.
Works Cited
"Goal-line
technology approved by FIFA." CNN Wire 5 July 2012. Academic OneFile. Web.
13 Feb. 2013.
Kelso,
Paul. “England v Germany: Frank Lampard's 'goal' reignites goal-line technology
debate.” The Telegraph. 2010. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Web. 18 Feb 2013.
Platini,
Michel. “Goal-line technology too expensive.”The Nation. 2012. Lexis
Nexis Academic. Web. 13 Feb. 2013.
Roger
I, Abrams. Sports Justice: The Law and the Business of Sports. Lebanon, NH,
USA: University Press of New England, 2010. Print.
