Following Frank Lampard’s controversial equaliser against Tottenham at the weekend, there has been renewed calls for goal-line technology to be brought into football and Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech argues that there is no good reason not to implement such an obvious solution to an ongoing problem.
The 28-year-old was talking to the club’s official website on the issue:
“For the past five years I have been asking myself ‘Why is bringing video technology into football still being delayed?’
“Why in such important games isn’t there a chance for the fourth official to see the replay and in five seconds have all controversy sorted out?
“Then you wouldn’t see protests going on for another 10 minutes.
“It is incomprehensible to me, really. Every year there is a number of such controversial situations and as a result of that they added two officials for the Champions League fixtures.
“Still, it has led to no solution. There are simply things which a human eye cannot see.”
On this occasion Lampard benefitted from what was a wrong decision, but the same player brought up the issue of goal-line tech before the season began after England were robbed of an equaliser against Germany in the second round of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
Chelsea’s second goal was also fortuitous yesterday as Salomon Kalou looked to be in an offside position when he scored the winner, but every football fan, manager, player and pundit understands that there’s always going to be a degree of human error when it comes to officiating football matches.
But we have the technology to put the goal-line arguments to bed and it’s a decision that could be made quickly, a lot quicker than it takes a football team to remonstrate with a referee over what they feel is a wrongly awarded/disallowed goal.
Is there any good reason not to bring in goal-line tech? Everyone in football seems to be asking for it, except the governing bodies FIFA and UEFA, who instead like to concern themselves with more pressing issues and banning neck-warming accessories and adding more officials who cannot see things.
