Football : Game with Great Players and Bad administators

I did not know that my father was such a huge fan of football. Born some time before Independence, he belongs to the generation who believed in contentment and “Early to bed…”. So all these years either there was no channel showing the FIFA world cup or I was not home to know of Dad’s interest in the “world’s favorite game”. Until, that is, around a week ago when he asked the channel number for ESPN. Some time later, my mom starts complaining about the buzzing sound which was giving here a headache. My father was enjoying the match, Vuvuzelas or not. One huge relief for mother is that the scheduling of matches means that only the earlier ones can be seen at reasonable IST times. Did I mention my father believes in the early to bed maxim? 

 Having become an armchair expert of football through the magic of TV and internet, I have to admire the players. Cristiano Ronaldo and Fabio Coentrao’s dribbling and runs with ball in the North Korea match (btw Portugal is my father’s favorite team), USA’s attitude and sharp passes and Argentina’s talent pool. The surprisingly good performance has been from New Zealanders. In yesterday’s match against the defending champions, the all whites (weird name given that their cricket team is called black caps) made the perfect start as Smeltz scored to give them a seventh-minute lead. While Italian players were moving around at different paces , New Zealand defenders kept their poise, their shape and their spirit to create what is arguably, the greatest result in New Zealand's Football history. Given that they belong to a 11 member Oceania Football Confederation, none of whom have a professional domestic league , and rarely play the more famous teams, people are increasing their praise along with the insistence that OFC should merge with Asian Football Confederation else, New Zealand should follow Australia and join AFC . I strongly support the Idea of a merger more than a quit and move, though I believe OFC should look the other way. The 10 member CONMEBOL is currently the strongest confederation but the members, all strong football playing nations, do not get enough slots in world cup due to low numbers while UEFA; whose members are yet to win a World cup outside their home continent, continues the imperial domination of the sport. A 21 member joint confederation will now mean New Zealand gets to play the likes of Brazil and Argentina at least once every 2 years .The OFC members will now have much greater football participation; players and audience alike while current CONMEBOL gets more say in the game to help reform the administration and get more World cup slotting .

 Talking of administration, what is Blatter’s and Fifa administration’s problem with technology in sport? Match officials’ manager and FIFA head of refereeing, has said refereeing is top class with some “human errors”. I admire FIFA referees. They have to work in high stress situation and 3 men are forced to decide on a situation in a game which requires a lot more. Without talking more about the well documented problem, a piece of news. The International Football Association Board (IFAB) is the body that determines the Laws of football. Here FIFA has 4 votes while the 4 countries of UK have one each. In their meeting in March, England and Scotland Football associations, the only ones with a proper league, supported “the idea of investigating experiments into the use of technology on goal-lines” while others opposed for reasons only known to god and them.  In May, the holy Grand Dukes allowed a non-compulsory trial to put 2 more additional referees behind goal line. The only possible justification FIFA could have is reducing the value of referees and creating unemployment .