W
Seriously, how many decisions do you get a season in a league like the one you had V England? Does it warrant the millions upon millions to introduce it at every level. You get a few every weekend I'd imagine, IF that, nobody really cares about the lower leagues.
It's part and parcel of football, you get decisions for and against you.
I don't like money in football, I dislike technology for one and not for all more.
How many goals are scored from offsides, incorrect red cards, or punches/elbows missed that should result in a red card, well, it happens every week, sometimes these decisions even out often they don't.
But millions and millions? Are you for real, EVERY single premiership match is covered by tv crews producing instant replays throughout, all the people involved are trained with the equipment and every stadium has places setup for these people to work. So essentially it would cost incredibly little as half the people involved are already in place every single game anyway.
Every lower league match is already recorded and every now and then these league 2 games are on tv where they manage to show live replays.
Unlike refs, these guys don't have to be unbiased, or really care much about anything. Theres already an extra couple of officials at every game. The only "regulation" required is the 5th substitute official/backup guy sits in the room with the guys splicing the replays together without leaving any out.
Its pretty simple most games will have 6 camera's at least, make that a minimum in terms of angles being shown in replays. There would be potential for a liverpool fan to be working behind the scenes on putting replays together and leaving out one that shows the contact while the others don't.
Thats the easy part of it, it would also cost incredibly little to implement.
I mean you could hire a group of 10 guys to do this new at every single game in the land, or you could use the existing ones and then, for instance, make sure the managers/team get a copy of the footage and especially a copy of all replays ref's use to make a decision and if they want to make a complaint from there they can.
Its video replays, not rocket science, it doesn't take a 60k a year linesman to train every day after their normal job to do it, the decisions will still be in the hands of those already trained for the job.
Essentially its a case of putting up the replays on a small screen in the tunnel, the ref runs over takes no more than 30 seconds to view the angles, he overturns the decision or play goes on, thats it, a little tv, in the tunnel, where theres probably already a tv.............. its hardly Star Trek levels of cost and technology.
Infact, considering we would need a moderate amount of people to work all the games, would that be generating jobs, paid for out of profit and not public sector spending, IE Rooney doesn't get a raise to 150k a week, its 149k a week and 1k a week extra goes to a payment to the FA to help create a bunch more jobs and make the game fair.
I for one would love to see players not yanking shirts in the box, not bear hug a CB like Lucio had done to him, essentially a wrestling/judo move and get away with it. I want to see football, not fouling and diving, which judging by this world cup is at its worst ever with the most inconsistant refering we've seen at a tournament yet.
SPain, Brazil, not massive cheats in the past have been rather embarassing, video replay 99% of cheating wiped out in 3 weeks.
Also remember, after a very short settling in period, people WILL foul less, they WILL cheat less. Here's another thing, ref's and linesmen will GET BETTER when they can instantly see a replay and know if they are right or wrong. They'll get better and make the right call more often anyway, aswell as have less calls to make due to less cheating, and because they are under less pressure they'll make less mistakes aswell because theres a safety net.
I've said this many times, we'd have 3-4 weeks of the funniest month of football in the history of football, we'll have red cards broadly applied to ALL teams that play, they'll all get caught cheating, they'll quickly learn they can't get away with anything anymore. We'll probably get a single 150minute game sometime, and then we'll get more fluid football than we have now, with less fouling, and less kicking the crap out of the other team to injure/keep them out the game and stop their fluid movement. Teams will be forced to play football, improve the football, not cheat and so we'll have less stoppages long term.
I mean if Vidic gets sent off for his first elbow of the season, or Terry gets a red for his first shirt pull in the area, do you really think they'll do it next week? Short term it will be fantastic entertainment, after a few weeks, we'll be back to football and no cheating.
null and void imo.