The media influence on the beautiful game.

I grew up playing soccer. A lot. From a tender age I was shuttled around by my loving parents to practices, soccer games, tournaments, and camps. Pretty much 3-4 days of the week and every weekend I played soccer for many, many years. Perhaps, it is needless to say that I enjoy watching the world cup and especially enjoy watching the US Team.

One thing that I noticed with this cup was a general sense of discontent from the calls made by the referee. I haven't reviewed the perspective of other national media outlets, but I can't imagine that Mexico or England was especially happy by the blown calls in either of their games.

Sepp Blatter the President of FIFA openly opposes instant replay saying soccer needs to keep the human element. However, I see one major problem with his comment, and that is the use of extra slow motion replay in the media. Commentators now have instant access to multiple angles and slow motion replay to see the errors of the officials. This use of media to scrutinize the real-time decisions of match officials is unfair to the officials and perhaps is even putting them in danger of eventual persecution from a begrudged fanatic of one nation or another.

This is a sport where players have been shot for scoring own goals. It is fairly serious business, and this is why I don't understand why FIFA doesn't protect its officials from the media with the use of some carefully considered replay. If a ball goes over the line there is absolutely no reason that it should not be considered a goal. This is not hockey were 12 players are probably laying on the puck in the crease and it is hard to determine if it crossed the line. One replay should quickly tell the match official if the goal counts.

I understand that off-side calls would be a trickier matter. Especially since this would lead to every player called off-side deciding they had better take the ball to goal and score (just in case replay confirms they were onside). Still, it seems to me like this problem is only going to continue to plague soccer. The media is not going to stop using instant replay and multiple angles to determine if the play was on or off-side.