Old Cup 2010: Road to South Africa

So the WC2010 will remain as we knew it yonks ago. There will not be any video technology, but there will also not be the extra referees circa Europa League 09/10! Fifa’s voting committee (i.e. Blatter alone for sure). This is rather surprising because after all the furore of the Ireland – France playoff, I was genuinely expecting some changes. Sure Fifa had some valid points when they said its still too early in the trial stages but how many games do you need to conduct a trial? There are thousands of matches being played at national level, and if there was an open and transparent voting system, I’m quite certain that most nations would vote in favour of the extra refs, France included, only to get the monkey off their back of course.

The excuse of requiring all the FAs to approve the system is bullshit, because playing in the Europa League, the teams are all from various FAs, and would have to oblige (read: not necessarily agree!) to the rules. Fifa has enough authority to overrule whatever France or Honduras have to say about the damn rules and we all know that!

Blatter is an absolute disgrace, and I hope his favoured nations of France, Switzerland, and whoever was seeded in the playoffs get roundly screwed over by debatable decisions, similar to the cross-that-should-have-never-been in Korea, when they beat Spain in the 2nd round.

Somewhere in my head, I suspected that he never even remotely considered putting on the extra refs for the WC. I think he only did it because of all the press coverage, and he called the emergency meeting just so that he can do some PR repair. And then he goes on to talk about Rep of Ireland’s request to be the 33rd team. And I think his PR man probably sent in his resignation as soon as he said that.

By the time the draw comes out this weekend, many will have put the handball incident in the back of their heads, unless your Irish, or support the Irish, and by June next year, there will be little mentioned of the handball incident. All I hope for now is that the extra refs come in time for the 2012 Euros and then video technology for WC2014. Is that too much to ask?