Fifa To Bring In 6 Officials At Each Game

Mar 9 2008 By Gordon Waddell

FIFA stunned world football yesterday by binning their bid to introduce goal-line technology.

Instead they will kick off a bizarre experiment introducing two more assistant referees behind the goals.

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the FIFA and UEFA presidents, rejected the English FA's proposals at the International Football Association Board meeting at Gleneagles.

It came as a major shock, with Platini the driving force behind a new move to have six officials looking after games.

And stunned FA chief executive Brian Barwick, sitting with SFA head honcho Gordon Smith at the top table, reckons the integrity of the game could suffer.

Two goal-line systems have been undergoing trials - one with a sensor in the ball and the other a "Hawkeye" style set-up used in tennis and cricket.

However, both have been axed and Barwick sighed: "I think it's dead in the water and that's a disappointment.

"We absolutely respect the democracy of the international board. But the FA has been in the vanguard of wanting to help referees and assistants.

"We've always been champions of this as long as it was going to work. But it has been decided football is a human game, not necessarily a technical game.

"And FIFA are looking at other ways of sorting out those decisions."

Barwick also insists FIFA's call was not made because of fears over the reliability of the technology.

He said: "One of the experiments seemed to be well on its way to being a success and the other was two-thirds of its way through.

"It's a duty of the International Board to call these things right and there was work to be done on both. But it's still a disappointment because we believe this would have been an improvement."

SFA supremo Smith would have rather seen the trials through and admitted: "I'm not opposed to technology - if it helps referees we should be looking at it."

However, the weighting of FIFA's vote on the board meant Platini was able to push through his own plan.

And it's one MailSport understands has been met with grave doubts, especially from refs and officials.

Financially it will be a drain with two more wages to be found for every game.

And recruitment, which has already plummeted, will be an even bigger issue.

However, FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said: "We have decided to freeze the goal-line technology and work on the additional referees. Then we'll see what happens after that.

"The new experiment was presented by Platini. He was worried technology will lead first to the goal-line then maybe offside then perhaps penalties.

"The new proposal will be tried in a UEFA or FIFA tournament in the coming year."

And SFA chief Smith explained how the new officials will operate.

He said: "They will be in a much closer position to look at goal-line incidents.

"They will also get a closer look at penalty kicks and things like that."