Goal-Line Technology? No Thanks!

After a night filled with drama and heavy emotions mostly due to refereeing blunders affecting both teams, Juventus Coach, Antonio Conte went on Sky Sports Italia after the match and ended up having an argument with pundit and former Milan star Zvonomir Boban.

Boban had said that Milan's disallowed goal had more of an impact on the match than Matri's goal which was ruled offside. Boban's point was that both errors made by the referee were not equal in magnitude which infuriated Conte as he lashed out:

“I find it unacceptable that you can compare the two and say one error was more damaging than the other. Both goals were incorrectly disallowed and are therefore equal. What, was our goal not worth as much? I see no difference whatsoever. They were both mistakes.”

I do agree with Conte in the sense that had Milan been 2-0 up, they might have taken their foot of the pedal and allowed Juve to stage a comeback as they did against Napoli, and had Juve's first goal counted, then the momentum from their goal could have spurred them on to score a winner. It's difficult to speculate on what might have happened.

However, in light of recent footage,   both errors were indeed not equal, simply because Matri's disallowed goal wasn't an error!

As you can see from the picture below, at the moment the ball is played, Matri appears offside by only millimeters.

On the other hand, Muntari's goal had clearly crossed the line by a large margin.

Ball Crosses the line, while Vidal signals the referee to call for Offside

While some might say that Muntari was offside when he scored, FIFA's amendment to the offside rule refutes that suggestion: 

If a defending player steps behind his own goal line in order to place an opponent in an offside position, the referee must allow play to continue and caution the defender for deliberately leaving the field of play without the referee’s permission when the ball is next out of play. 

No doubt, the paragraphs written above would spur endless debates between both sets of fans. An aspect of the game that I fear would be lost, had technology been introduced to football. 


For years I've struggled to understand why FIFA and UEFA are so reluctant to implement goal-line technology. After-all, It's a very simple process that would cost clubs less than a week's wage of their lowest earning player to implement- and I'm certain that they would be happy to do it. The only conclusion, which is primarily based on twisted logic is that the organizing bodies actually want these sorts of errors to happen.

Referring mistakes cause plenty of emotions and spur post-match debates for weeks and months. After-all, no fan is going to stop supporting their team because the referee made a mistake, on the contrary, the fans cheer louder and the players play harder when they feel hard done by a certain decision.  

Yes one mistake could result in a team being knocked out of a competition, or in extreme cases, lose the Final of the Champions League or World Cup, and FIFA argue that it's all part of the game. Now I realize that they just might have a point. 

With technology in football, there would be no heated post-match debates like the ones Boban and Conte experienced. There would be no journalists writing about why the goal should have stood ; no articles by fans justifying their team's superiority; no arguments among friends and colleagues about what would have been if that penalty kick was given. Not the worst thing in the world since the result will be a fair one, but it eliminates a lot of the drama and emotions associated with football, and that would certainly be taking something away from the game. 

In the NFL, for example, your team scores a touchdown, the whole stadium erupts in celebration; only for the officials to call for an "official review". The officials take about 30 seconds going over video replays to decide whether the touchdown stands. Fair to both teams, no doubt, but the excitement is greatly diminished.  

After watching a few NFL games, I think to myself,  will football every come to that ? The advantage is that refereeing errors would be completely eliminated from the game. But I don't particularly like the idea of waiting 30 seconds for the officials to assess whether a player was offside , whether it was a corner or a goal kick, a yellow or a red, a penalty kick, a handball, a goal , etc. That would no doubt reduce the enjoyment I get from watching the beautiful game. 

It is in that respect that the organizing bodies may have a point in refusing to give in to demands of introducing technology to the game. If they start with goal-line technology, it would open new doors, and after that, who knows where it ends.