Dave Kidd: Television bosses have brainwashed people into believing video technology is inevitable – but will we really be better off?
TV execs want tech in decision-making because The Telly doesn’t want to observe football, it wants to be central to it
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FIRST things first — news of the referees’ stag do in Marbella was a belting story.
Not least because we were all intrigued by what Anthony Taylor and his fellow whistlers might have got up to.
Because when a referee is the groom-to-be, there’d be no point tying him naked to a lamp post. Not when these men experience ritual public humiliation every weekend.
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I don’t honestly believe there is a link between the stag do and the disastrous displays of Taylor and Kevin Friend on Saturday — even though, in this job, I’m supposed to join in with the mock outrage and pretend I do.
The refs probably weren’t hungover. Taylor simply had a shocker in awarding Burnley a penalty for a handball by a Burnley player, after Friend had suffered a prolonged nightmare at Manchester United versus Bournemouth.
Yet this didn’t stop The Telly from using it as another excuse to advocate technology in decision-making.
After highlighting Taylor and Friend’s clangers on Sky’s Monday Night Football, host David Jones asked: “Surely it can’t come soon enough now?”
But The Telly wants technology in decision-making because The Telly doesn’t want to observe football, it wants to be central to football.
The Telly will tell you we must have technology because there are dozens of different cameras at every match.
And The Telly will tell you we must have technology because Premier League football is now worth so many billions in TV revenue.
So The Telly is actually telling you we must have technology because of The Telly.
Then The Telly pays ex-footballers, managers and journalists to go on The Telly, where they agree with each other about how obvious this all is.
Yet if you actually speak to senior refereeing figures involved in the trials for a ‘video assistant referee system’ they will tell you it is proving a logistical nightmare to implement in such a free-flowing sport.
And they will tell you they are nowhere near to agreeing a workable system.
This is despite a bold announcement that the FA Cup will be used as a guinea pig for such chaos next season. Because the best way to revive interest in a wonderful competition, downgraded by bosses chasing Premier League TV money, is to turn it into a freak show. Obviously.
The Telly will tell you technology works in cricket and rugby. Which depends what you mean by ‘works’.
If the outcome of a Test match being decided by which captain is the better umpire, rather than which team is better at cricket, then it often ‘works’.
And if delays of six or seven minutes to judge the legitimacy of a try — without anyone being any the wiser — then it ‘works’ in rugby, too.
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Some in cricket and rugby would rather scrap the Decision Review System and the Television Match Official. You just won’t hear them on The Telly.
Technology doesn’t stop arguments, it causes different arguments. And referees lose confidence, err on the side of caution and review everything.
No one has a problem with line calls — goal-line technology works perfectly, as does Hawk-Eye in tennis and run-outs or stumpings in cricket. But beyond that is a minefield.
It was interesting to hear the thinking footballer Frank Lampard pointing out on Sky that for many incidents, technology will be useless.
Taylor’s handball decision at Swansea might have been prevented by a video ref, but one major difficulty is where to draw the line on when and where you use such a system.
And while last season’s Manchester United v Bournemouth fixture took 2½ days to complete because of a bomb scare, technology would have meant Saturday’s controversial affair lasting 2½ days without a bomb scare.
And, unless mind-reading technology is also introduced, we’d still be guessing as to the intent of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Tyrone Mings.
But a VAR system will be rolled out soon enough. The Telly has brainwashed too many people into believing it is inevitable.
Despite BT Sport’s massive punt on European football rights, the football authorities are worried viewing figures are dropping due to illegal streaming and the fact young people no longer sit and watch The Telly as older generations do.
Why have sympathy for The Telly, when it’s The Telly that makes Arsenal fans travel to Middlesbrough on a Monday night?
And why change the very essence of the world’s most popular sport just to appease its demand to dispense unattainable levels of justice?
— IF Leicester seemed like a club dreamt up by Lewis Carroll last season, then it truly has been Alice in Wonderland stuff since Claudio Ranieri’s axing.
The players have been savaged for having the temerity to play well and win matches, while caretaker-manager Craig Shakespeare was hammered for wanting the job on a permanent basis.
OK, so we all loved Ranieri and no, Shakespeare doesn’t have an imaginary bell but isn’t he being criticised by people who bemoan the absence of managerial opportunities for talented English coaches?
And do they think he’d have made such a breakthrough by being meek and mild?
— KARREN BRADY urges us to “Look at all the various reports, Deloitte, Football Finance, (and) you’ll see we’re the fastest-growing Premier League club, not only in terms of revenue, but in global appeal and recognition.
“We have a brilliant new stadium at the foothills of the London financial centre.
“We are growing rapidly, increasing our asset value, expanding our global reach. We are in the top 20 most valuable sporting brands in the world.”
As Chelsea fans sang at the London Stadium: “You sold your soul for this s***hole.” And: “You’re not West Ham anymore.”
— IT’S always the flair players like Eden Hazard who are said to possess ‘magic’.
But at West Ham on Monday, Hazard’s workaholic Chelsea team-mate N’Golo Kante controlled a ball in the air and sent it forward at pace 20 yards towards the byline.
Then, realising no one else was going to reach it, he sprinted forward to receive his own pass.
And it all looked far more like actual sorcery than anything Hazard would do.
— SO, Team Sky asked their cyclists to tweet messages of support for embattled boss Dave ‘Sir Dave’ Brailsford.
The ploy backfired when Tour de France winner Chris Froome failed to join in.
But even without this snub, who could possibly have reckoned that such an obviously stage-managed gesture was the right tactic when an organisation’s integrity is being questioned over drug-taking suspicions?
Team Sky say they want to be transparent. And, yep, we can see right through them.
— IT was a dramatic night’s boxing at the O2 on Saturday.
But when you pay £17 to see it on TV, you expect the post-fight interviews to mention David Haye’s ruptured Achilles, which was critical to Tony Bellew’s victory.
