The various refereeing errors in the just concluded World Cup in South Africa have left football fans around the world wondering when the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, will embrace the advantages of 21st technology in deciding disagreements at the goal-line.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who has until recently been resolutely set against using technology in refereeing football games, finally announced last week that the federation would be looking into allowing goal-line technology in the next World Cup at its annual board meeting in October.
His sudden change of heart can most likely be attributed to England’s goal by Frank Lampard against Germany in this tournament, which was disallowed despite cameras showing that it clearly entered the goal after bouncing behind the goal line. Millions of television viewers around the globe saw the video replays in slow motion, but the decision of a sole human referee was allowed to stand despite the overwhelming evidence that he was wrong.
FIFA has long argued that human referees cannot be held hostage to technology, and that games cannot be stopped every few minutes for referees to look at video playbacks of disputed calls. “No matter which technology is applied, at the end of the day a decision will have to be taken by a human being. This being the case, why remove the responsibility from the referee to give it to someone else? It is often the case that, even after a slow-motion replay, ten different experts will have ten different opinions on what the decision should have been,” said Blatter at the 124th Annual General Meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) in Zurich in March.
But the disadvantages of not relying on technology have become all too apparent in this World Cup, and even the technology-phobic Blatter has had to backtrack.
FIFA has pointed out that using technology at all football matches around the world would be prohibitively expensive because of the sheer number of matches played. As an example, they cited the 900 games that were held as preliminaries to this year’s World Cup. A less costly solution that the federation is considering is to add two more referees at the goal-line, something that has already been tried during the last Europa League, and which would add an extra two sets of eyeballs to make decisions on close calls.
Other sports such as tennis and basketball are already successfully relying on cameras to provide video playbacks in slow motion from various angles that referees refer to in close calls. So why not football?
FIFA Secretary-General Jerome Valcke says that he supports using technology for goal-line disputes but not for offsides, which seems like a fair compromise to bring the scoring of football into the 21st century.
“The goal-line technology I am fine with, but the video replays I don’t like. I think it would kill the game,” he said. “Sure it would help the referees but it will kill the game. You have to stop the game. In the last 10 minutes when there is such tension that anything can happen, you will stop the game one, two, three, four times to make sure it is the right decision.”
One hopes that by the time the next World Cup is held in Brazil in 2014, technology will be relied upon much more to help make refereeing decisions that are fairer and much more accurate than they have been so far