Goal-line technology – at last!

At last, the world of football will be allowed goal-line technology, and not before time I hear you shout!

Will it be the death knell for the football pundit? Of course it won’t.  Yes, it will stop any discussion over whether the ball crossed the line or not, but there are many more contentious decisions during a game that raise questions.

Was it hand ball in the box, did he clip his ankle in the box, was it offside in the lead up to a goal? All these questions will still need to be micro analysed by our illustrious panel of ex-pro’s as the new technology does not extend to any of the above mentioned issues. The question is how many controversial decisions will goal line technology resolve percentage wise? The answer is a small number.

The next live game on TV will prove this theory correct. There will be more decisions that prove contentious away from the goal line that will lead to a goal being given or not as the case may be, and this makes goal line technology improve decision making by no more than 20% during any game of football. Not until Fifa implement across the board technology will it be as close to 100% accuracy as it can be.

It has taken so long for Fifa to make a decision on an issue that most people have been crying out for, for years, that the decision to use technology for penalty calls and offsides may not happen for the same length of time it took for them to ratify goal line technology. I would hazard a guess that this weekend’s premier league games will see as little as 5% potential for the use of the new technology.

With that in mind, referees will still be vilified for missing crucial decisions that influence the outcome of games. The question is, why can’t technology be used for handballs, players mistiming tackles and offsides in the lead up to a goal? They use it to analyse in the football studios of the BBC and SKY and It seems to be very clear if a foul is committed, the ball hit a hand or a striker is in front of the last defender.

The only answer can be the time it would take to analyse each decision and the stop start nature of a game, yet this happens in American Football and the stadiums at these games are crammed full. An American Football game lasts 1 hour in actual time but can run 3.5 hours from the start of the game to the final whistle, and we complain about extending our game by half an hour maximum?

Fifa need to be bold and quickly implement full use of the technology available soon after goal line technology has proved to be a success – here’s hoping.