I get great pleasure from watching competitive sports. Regardless of the sport itself, there’s not much that can match the excitement of representatives from different countries or states or cities battling it out to see who’s the best. And at the end of it, you can say without any doubt: Roger Federer is the best tennis player in the world, Lewis Hamilton is the best Formula 1 driver in the world, the New Orleans Saints are the best American Football team in America. What could be more exciting than watching the best in the world prove themselves?
And that’s why I don’t like football. I’ve been watching a lot of the World Cup matches, and entertaining though it is, it’s just not fair. Frequently, the winner isn’t decided by who played best, but by who got luckiest. That’s not a feeling that even entered my mind at any point while I was watching the Super Bowl this year — there was not a doubt in my mind that New Orleans deserved the Super Bowl (upset though I was at the Colts’ loss) — so what’s the difference? Let me count the ways.
In most sports — tennis and American football being notable examples — we put as much technology in place as possible to ensure the victor wins fairly. There can be no doubt whether or not a serve bounced out, or a touchdown was scored, or a lap time is correct. In football, there seems to be something to complain about at the end of every single game if you look hard enough. The sport is still in the dark ages. We trust the referee and his linesmen with every decision. He decides when a ball goes out of play, when a player is fouled, when a goal is scored, and he can even stop the match if he feels like it. We have the technology to absolutely ensure that he got it right. We have instant replays and goal-line technology, there doesn’t need to be any question about the veracity of a goal. But at the end of the day, the referee’s eyesight is all that keeps things moving along. Just one guy expected to see everything that happens in an area of around 7,140 square metres. That’s not fair. (Fifa’s argument, incidentally, is that the public likes to debate these decision, which we do, but I think we’d much rather see games officiated fairly.)
On top of that, the rules are written in a way that makes the referee’s word in the moment the only thing that matters. On Sunday, we knew Lampard had scored, Germany’s goalkeeper knew Lampard had scored, every single person in the stadium seemed to know Lampard had scored, and certainly everyone at home knew Lampard had scored. Everyone except the referee. In that moment, he said no goal, then went off at half time, watched the replay, and was horrified. In Argentina’s game that same day, even the linesman was able to point out that the player that scored was offside, but the goal had already been awarded, and the referee doesn’t hold the power to overturn his own call. As was pointed out to me on Twitter: goals are not awarded, they are scored. You either score or you didn’t, and once the call is made, it’s final.
Both of these problems stem from the fact that football is a fluid, continuous game. There are no breaks in play in which to review the events of the previous play like there are in Tennis and American Football. This has been FIFA’s excuse throughout the World Cup: they want to maintain the fluidity of the game. And it’s a reasonable excuse, but it comes as the expense of a fair game. (Less reasonable is that they also don’t want to take the hit to their wallets.)
And these problems are only impacted by the players themselves. Germany’s goalkeeper knew a goal had been scored and continued to play anyway. Players constantly bounce and dive around the field trying to earn undeserved free kicks and penalties. Every time a ball goes out of play, players on both sides raise their hands to claim the throw in. And there are so many examples of this that I could go all day. Here are two more big ones: Maradona’s “Hand of God” in 1986, Thierry Henry’s pivotal handball against Ireland. These were both pivotal moments in they games they happened in, and both Maradona and Henry later admitted (though it took Maradona twenty years) that they knew they’d fouled and continued to play anyway. Even the players aren’t playing by the rules, and the reason is plain as day: they know they’ll get away with it, and sometimes it will even work in their favour. Germany’s goalkeeper got away with it on Sunday, and then boasted about it to a journalist after the game.
If we can’t even rely on the referee and the players to play fair, why bother watching?
There is one other factor that’s more fundamental to football, and this one’s the deal breaker. The scoring is so low that the outcome of the game can be heavily influenced by luck or bad refereeing. All it takes is one lucky goal and the dynamic of the game shifts completely. That was never more obvious than when England came from a goal behind to equalize this weekend: they were so pumped and adrenaline-fuelled that they went right ahead and scored another. The change was plain as day. That second goal was then disallowed, and again, the dynamic shifted and it was obvious, and it lead to another 3 German goals caused largely by terrible defending and angry players. And in Football, a bad call by a referee, a disallowed goal, an undeserved penalty? It’s all just luck.
There’s no denying that Germany were the better team on that particular day, but who can say how different the outcome could have been with a competently officiated match? It might, at the very least, have been less embarrassing for everyone involved.
Football isn’t a game of skill. Yes, it’s skill that gets the ball in the net, but the outcome of an unsettling number of matches is completely dependent on factors that have nothing to do with scoring goals. These players train their entire lives to compete for their country (ignoring for the moment how grossly overpaid they are for this), only to be sent back home because the referee didn’t have a good enough view of what happened.
It’s easy to say it’s just part of the game, but it doesn’t change the fact that football is inherently unfair and classless. I’m not interested in watching a sport where skill is just one part of the equation in determining winners. Despite my assertions above, the same can be true of most sports, but nowhere is it more obvious and ever present than football.
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And just for reference, in this World Cup alone — just in the games I’ve watched, which is less than half of them, not including the previously mentioned incidents — I’ve also witnessed the following:
What a shambles.
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