RANT: Football, Referees and Learning to Talk About Something Else

RANT TIME

After having a debate with my mate over whether Fernando Torres dived in the Chelsea-Utd match earlier today using slow-mo replay to try and discern whether he had any justification to go down, I reached a fucking amazing conclusion (this ain't aimed at you Ollie; it's been brewing for a while):

If after mulling over slo-mo replays for ten minutes and still not reaching a definitive answer then IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER IF THE REF GOT IT RIGHT OR WRONG BECAUSE HE'S ONLY SODDING HUMAN. People - fans, pundits, managers, journalists - don't  understand this.

(For what it's worth, he dived)

There is literally no point discussing it, and there is literally no point in chastising the referee and accusing him of being in Alex Ferguson's pocket, because sometimes refereeing is an impossible job. In fact, I can think of few jobs that are more difficult. The marginal calls come thick and fast, decisions have to be made near-instantaneously without the benefit of replays, the pressure of the fans, the players' ploys to con him, the going over he can expect in the press and on Twitter and on Match of the Day if he makes a mistake - all these add up to one of the most ridiculously difficult professions ever. Seriously.

So, if a player goes down and it's not clear whether he had any justification to even under close examination, ignore it and move on; nothing can be done. The referee certainly isn't at fault. If a player is a foot offside when a ball is played through and he scores, ignore it and move on. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make such perfect judgement every time? I heard about one example where some officials showed a room full of journalists a clip of an offside call from the linesman's perspective. They only got to see it once, and had to vote on whether it was offside or not. Nearly every single one got it wrong; the linesman who made the decision on the day got it right. So if these highly trained hawk-eyed ladies and gentlemen can't always tell, then no one can tell. So don't worry about it. These things happen. Such is football.

Another downside to analysing every aspect of the officials' performances is that Match of the Day and such like become tedious debates about marginal calls. This is the most boring possible thing to debate. "Oooh, if you watch carefully you can see there was contact" opines Mr. Hansen. "But it was minimal at best" retorts Mr. Dixon. "But there was contact". Enough. Talk about the actual football please. It's quite an interesting sport and there's a lot to analyse and discuss.

/rant


N.B This is somewhat moot after what I've written above, but whatevs. 'Contact' is not enough to call a foul. Football is, strangely enough, a full-contact sport. That means you are expected to take knocks and nudges and just get on with it. If the challenge makes contact with the attacker but is not heavy enough to fell him, but he goes down anyway, that is still a dive. We laugh/throw rotten vegetables at players who take a gentle touch to the face but go down like they've been punched; the same applies to feet and knees coming into contact with opposition legs.