Un article intéressant de Soccernet sur l'arbitrage.

[James Bond 007]

Updated: June 26, 2006

Card-sharp refs spoiling the spectacle

Norman Hubbard

Camaraderie can be forged in strange situations.

As Barcelona team-mates, Deco and Giovanni van Bronckhorst may have bonded winning the Spanish title or the Champions League. They seemed to grow closer on a surreal Sunday in Nuremberg. They also provided one of the images of the World Cup, sat together and consoling one another after absurd dismissals.

Indeed, the Dutch left back, for an innocuous foul, received a yellow card, the same punishment as Luis Figo got for a head butt (in the Portuguese captain's defence, if you are going to headbutt anyone then the irritating Mark van Bommel is a deserving candidate).

Costinha and Khalid Boulahrouz had become the first names on referee Valentin Ivanov's red card. The yellow was brandished 16 times, completing a World Cup record.

And yet it was not a dirty game. Instead, it marked the nadir for referees at this tournament, an achievement given the chaotic conclusion of the Croatia-Australia game when Graham Poll contrived to book Josip Simunic three times.

An inability to count to two correctly is, you would expect, a serious impediment in all walks of life, though those dealing with binary numbers may disagree.

Hark back to the initial days of the World Cup and controversies were comparatively rare. The contrast with a Champions League final marred by poor decision-making seemed apparent. But hopes it would herald an era of improved officiating have disappeared.

Instead, with every game, the controversy mounts. There was Poll's horror show - the Englishman also contrived to miss two clear-cut penalties - and Markus Merk's remarkable award of a spot kick to Ghana against the USA.

There are a host of incorrect red cards - those shown to van Bronckhorst, Sweden's Teddy Lucic, the Australian Brett Emerton, Mexico's Luis Perez and Ukraine's Vladimir Vashchuk among them - and several other dubious dismissals.

Crucial errors are becoming commonplace. Comparatively little attention, outside Latin America, has been paid to the officiating of Massimo Busacca in the meeting of Argentina and Mexico. It produced a footballing classic and a winner to linger in the memory for years, yet it was marred by three serious mistakes.

Firstly, Argentina's Gabriel Heinze was clearly the last defender when he hacked down Jose Fonseca, but was only shown the yellow card. Then Mexico's Jose Castro was cautioned for a foul committed by his team-mate Gerardo Torrado, who was later booked himself, meaning he could have been dismissed.

And, in the additional minutes before extra time, Lionel Messi had a 'winner' wrongly disallowed for offside.

Mark Viduka, who suffered one injustice when denied a penalty, came to Poll's defence, pointing out that referees are only human. So they are, and they have a mitigating factors. These are middle-aged men in desperate pursuit of elite athletes. In such situations, mental and physical tiredness seems inevitable, and decision-making suffers.

They are also easy scapegoats for players, managers and fans alike, who too often confuse a mistake for an indication of conspiracy or corruption. Their professional competence can be questioned, but their integrity should not be.

But the Swiss official Urs Meier, one of the leading referees of his generation, was hounded into retirement in a vicious witch hunt led by The Sun newspaper after disallowing a Sol Campbell 'winner' in Euro 2004. His decision, though debateable, was correct.

So, too was, the Uruguayan Jorge Larrionda in each of the three red cards he brandished during the battle of Kaiserslautern, when Italy finished with 10 men to the USA's nine, even if many of the minor decisions he made were incorrect.

In particular, he was right to implement FIFA's directive about punishing the two-footed, studs-up lunge with expulsion. It is a challenge with the potential to inflict serious injury and both American Pablo Mastroeni and Serb Mateja Kezman fully merited red cards for such tackles.

In contrast, FIFA's other clampdown has been mishandled. Goalkeepers Ricardo and Paul Robinson, neither delaying a goal kick for more than a couple of seconds, were cautioned for supposed timewasting.

Few officials have managed to differentiate between legitimate pauses and deliberate attempts to halt play. And in a bid to stop diving, blatant penalties have been ignored.

The game's governing body cannot escape blame. There has long been the suspicion that too many footballers do not know the rules. Players have complained that referees do not understand football. The more pertinent question is, does FIFA understand football?

At the moment, they have little time to make a claim for competence. Past World Cups have been tarnished by laughable errors but, whether the failure of Tunisian Ali Bennaceur to spot Diego Maradona's Hand of God in 1986 or the shambolic display of Ecuadorian Byron Moreno four years ago, officials from emerging footballing nations for many of the more glaring blunders.

No longer: Ivanov, Poll and Merk come from established football powers; it is thought that the Englishman and the German were earmarked for high-profile games in the latter stages of the tournament.

Now FIFA may be running out of trusted officials. Paradoxically, this is a consequence of the doctrine of infallibility among referees that FIFA subscribes to.

Decisions are invariably upheld, suspensions rarely quashed and retroactive punishments rarely given to misbehaving players. With one official on the pitch acting as judge, jury and executioner, justice is neither done nor seen to be done.

A more rigorous appeals procedure, and a more democratic process, would benefit football and, in turn, referees. Ghana would have been especially grateful. Asamoah Gyan was suspended for taking a penalty after he thought the referee's whistle had blown; despite the protests of the Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech, he was then booked and banned.

Then Michael Essien was ruled out of the match against Brazil, despite the support of the USA coach Bruce Arena, after being harshly cautioned against the Americans. Cech and Arena, for their altruism, were ignored.

And on the pitch, referees could receive more assistance. What, for example, does a fifth official do? He certainly doesn't seem to make the first four any better. Instead, he could become the TV official, using replays to help the man on the pitch adjudicate correctly. But compare football with most other sports and the mistrust of technology seems positively anachronistic, if not wilfully stupid.

Few, however, would expect such suggestions to be introduced in the next World Cup in South Africa. In the meantime, however, expect more debatable decisions with, as the stakes grow higher, still greater consequences, and a commensurate diminishing of respect for the men in black.

For, if these are the best referees in the world, then who are the worst?

Source : http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/st ... d=tab1pos2