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Half-time Hairdryer – June 3, 2011
An open letter to re-elected FIFA president Sepp Blatter
Dear Mr Blatter,
As an avid football fan, both of a club team at the forefront of making the sport a truly global game and of the English national team, can I make a couple of requests for you to consider during your fourth term in office.
We need goal-line technology. I understand the issues with having full-on video referees in use across the field of play and that football is a faster moving game than say, rugby. But the old excuses that are trotted out about the referee having the final decision and human judgement being a fundamental part of the psyche of football just doesn’t ring true anymore.
It’s a multi-multi-billion pound sport that whole industries now thrive on and one which is far more than about putting an inflated pig skin in an onion bag. To say errors of judgement are acceptable is in this day and age is unacceptable in my opinion. The world has moved on at a great pace and it is only damaging the reputation of the game and FIFA itself to insist that it stays the same throughout the 21st Century.
Can we also have an international offside rule that is accepted and understood by all? Pundits should never be able to use the phrase ‘he was just offside’. He either is or isn’t. I wholeheartedly blame confusion in the understanding of the offside rule for this non sequitur.
I also urge you to take a long hard look at your internal affairs and make every effort you can to put FIFA on a right course on transparent waters.
It’s very admirable to want to take football all around the world, and I agree that the World Cup is a perfect vehicle to do this. But Russia and Qatar? Some climates just aren’t amenable to football and, although Russia is better, Qatar is in no way a good location for a summer football tournament.
Moving it to a December/January timeslot is going to play all manner of havoc with domestic leagues, something which surely FIFA should prize just as highly as its marquee event. In the end, it is domestic leagues that garner interest in football week in, week out, not the World Cup, and which influence, rightly or wrongly, the very grassroots of the game and the future of football.
Kind regards,
David Pittman
Editor, SGB Sports
