The Last World Cup Post For Four Years, part 2

Topic(s): me
2010-07-05 23:56:45 US/Pacific

As predicted, the United States defeated Algeria. We did make it a little more dramatic than necessary. Landon Donovan's stoppage time goal won the game at 1-0. As a reward for winning Group C, we were matched up against Ghana in the round of 16.

If you'll recall, we played and lost to Ghana in World Cup 2006. That game ended 2-1. Unfortunately, so did World Cup 2010.

I'll take two items away from World Cup 2010.

1. The United States is right there. So close. We nearly beat Ghana. In fact, the game's tenor felt as if we would beat them. It was close, but in the end we lost. Then Ghana advanced to play Uruguay, and despite what the official score sheet says (Uruguay victory via penalty kicks), Ghana defeated Uruguay to advance to the semi-finals. Maybe in World Cup 2014 we have a slightly better player in a position or two, and we're able to beat the likes of Ghana, and advance to the semi-finals.

2. FIFA (the official world soccer organization) really needs to assist their referees. The referees are doing their best, but the game has become too fast. The referees simply can't make perfect calls for every close play, and in the modern game there are loads of close plays, which means there are an increasing number of wrong calls.

The United States had two goals taken away on wrong calls. And when your aggregate World Cup goal tally is five goals, as is the case for not just the United States but almost all 32 teams, two goals are imperatively important!

The most egregious decision went against England. England scored a goal to even the score at 2-2 versus the Germans. But wait. The goal was not called a goal. Despite crossing the goal line by approximately two feet. How is that possible? Because the game is too fast. While the linesman is busy checking for offside players, the ball crossed the goal line, but then bounced back across the goal line in the other direction.

What should happen is FIFA should introduce technology in to the game. Put a location sensor inside the ball. Have computers track the ball. Computers would know with 100% accuracy if the ball had crossed the goal line. Also, computers would not cause a delay in the game at all. Not even a single second, which I believe is an important points for a game like soccer which has literally non-stop motion.

I'll go a bit engineerish here and point out that if a computer knows the instantaneous location of the ball, it also knows the velocity, acceleration, and direction of the ball.

Acceleration -- meaning the computer can track when the ball is kicked or otherwise passed, which is an important part of the offside rule. (Offensive players must be behind two defensive players at the time of the ball's passing from the passer to the receiving offensive player.)

Direction -- meaning the computer can track if a pass is forward or backwards, which is an important part of the offside rule. (Offensive players are considered not offside if the pass to that offensive player is a backward pass.)

Based on acceleration and direction, we're halfway to defining offside completely within the realm of a computer's brain. All we're lacking is the offensive player's location relative to two leading defensive players, and the referee's discretion that the offensive player was or was not involved in the play.

Location -- if we're to have a computer track player's location for the offside rule, we'll have to redefine the player's location slightly. At present, an offensive player's location is in violation if any part of his/her body is forward of the last bit of the defender's body. So in theory, a long strand of hair could have an offensive player offside. No way a computer can track that. My idea is to redefine this part of the rule as the offensive player's shoes must be behind the defensive player's shoes. And we can put a location sensor in the shoes of each player.

Referee's discretion -- is simple. If the offensive player is in offside violation at the time of the pass, and the pass is forward, and he/she leads too many defenders, then the computer can buzz the referee's earpiece. The referee can then decide if the violating offensive player is involved in the play.

Will all this happen? No way. But if I were in charge of FIFA, it sure would. Soccer purists everywhere would hate me. But at least goals would really be goals, and the fans could trust that the calls were correct. In my opinion, we'd see scoring increase as well.

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