Nightmare!
We're going to have Graeme Poll and Hugh Dallas back in the game as, yet again, the footballing authorities choose a corrupt template rather than meaningful technological advancements.
It is always a disturbing day when you find yourself agreeing with David Dein.
Always.
And Wednesday was one such day.
Speaking at the Soccerex Spectacle in Guateng, Dein backed the utilisation of advanced techie aids to improve the integrity of football, rather than the strategy of the murky ones who desire extra referees instead.
Not only that but retired referees that we are/were fortunate to have seen the back of...
In this post, we explore the hidden agendas of the organisations, bodies and individuals who are backing a Life Of Poll - the expansion of the officiating team to six individuals, with one stationed behind each goal.
Why choose more error-laden individuals when there is technology that is able to remove doubt from virtually all decisions at the top levels of the game?
Why introduce uncertainty and fake outcomes?
When such outcomes are linked to betting markets where total global liquidity frequently exceeds £1 billion on one match, would it not seem a rational route to attempt to establish the most robust template possible to strengthen the integrity of the game outcome?
Apparently not...
There are those who prefer for psychopathic singular or cartelised control of match outcomes.
For this purpose, human input is far more malleable, shall we say, than HawkEye, for instance.
Why choose human error over technological near-certainty?
Really.
Why...?
When an entirely illogical infrastructure is being proposed, and when some of the individuals and organisations involved in the early experimentation of such an infrastructure have form, so to speak, the standard sousveillance techniques come into play.
Who stands to gain most from an expansion in the format of the corrupt template?
Who loses?
Additionally, who would lose the most if advanced technologies were chosen over flawed, and sometimes corrupted, humans?
This is a major battle over the future integrity of the game of football.
It is by no means the only battle.
Total Information Awareness.
Total Vigilance.
Keir Radnedge on the alleged 'buying' of Bayern Munchen prior to the Second Leg of last season's UEFA Cup Semi Final against Zenit Leningrad: "Even if we believe it never happened, the fact that there are more and more, richer and richer, organisations out there are cause for concern. No country, no competition is safe."
The arguments for and against digital technologies being used in football are all superfluous.
There is only one overriding factor, a super-parameter.
It is one of those decisions that has only one logical input.
Integrity.
Football is already teetering on the edge of becoming horseracing, some leagues eg the English Premiership are now analytically identical to the modelling and analytics used in British horserace markets!
How weird is that?
Digital and video technologies are the only salvation.
If the Premier League/ PGMOB are going to continue to insist on such a small grouping of referees then the potential market power of these referees has to be compromised repeatedly.
Instead of the current situation where, as we posted the other day, 62% of Sky's televised matches this season have been refereed by just three referees, why not a hugely expanded roster of one hundred referees, each of whom who officiate at four games per season, including one televised event.
Sorted.
No hyper-owners or bookmakers or other members of the criminal fringe are going to be too interested in 'owning' a whistleblower if you are only buying four Premiership games per season.
Of course, the 'bring back Poll and Dallas' bandwagon are viewing a rather different mathematics.
Stuart Attwell, if he were coerced or bribed into compromising his professionalism in return for lots of money and a nice life away from prying eyes (check out the Newmarket mansions of more than one former jockey!), would be a prize asset to a bookmaker or an underground betting organisation.
The youngest of the Select Group (sic) of English officials, at 25 years of age, his 'owner' could expect direct control of 1250 matches in the next half century (25 years as referee and 25 as one of these newfangled goalline referees).
Wow!
1250 games!!!
If your business practices gravitate towards shady and grey strategies, why on earth wouldn't you seek control of such an individual?
Twenty five games per season, with an average global liquidity in the several hundreds of millions of pounds for each match.
Direct control over each of these events.
Tempting eh?
There is no evidence that increasing the number of match officials to six will improve the integrity of match outcomes.
The above arguments should be enough, but all of the supplementary arguments are positively correlated with the selection of technology over more human error.
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Having six officials, however well co-ordinated and however suitably hierarchical, is going to be a recipe for confusion and yet more public relations disasters.
The Premier League and the PGMOB are refusing to allow an open-mike policy, an obvious indication of integrity that is used in all other sports, as they obviously do not wish for the public to be hearing the conversations between the match officials.
Why?
Why are all changes seemingly made in order to positively correlate with the desires of those who might wish for a corruptible template to be established?
William Gaillard of UEFA, ##########################################, is selling the extra refs idea: "The camera is not a faithful observer of reality, you have no idea of the impact, the intensity of the violence.".
Football Is Fixed: "The referee, his linespeople, the 4th official, and the 5th and 6th officials are not faithful observers of hyperreality, you have no idea of the impact, the intensity of the market manipulation."
David Dein: "There is technology today, it’s been introduced in tennis and they can’t tell me technology is not there. Forty years ago, America put a man on the moon. So the technology is there."
As with all murkiness in the English and European game, the trails always lead to the same locations, the same bodies, the same individuals.
One of these individuals is Our Beloved Leader, ##################################
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But whenever there is a disaster, a misapplication of the rules, a police inquiry, a rigged match, an outburst of integrity, ScudamoreWorld is always omnipresent.
As Keith McCabe said following the latest nail being hammered in West Ham United's coffin yesterday: "The Premier League is under-managed and needs wise football heads on the board. The Football League board is maturer. The [Premier League/ West Ham/ Tevez] affair was mishandled and we have had no choice but to seek financial compensation."
Football Is Fixed: "The Premier League is more than under-managed. It is an autocracy that #########################################################
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The only benefit that I am able to decipher from the 6 Officials ruse is that, at least, it would allow the theatre of an ageing Hugh Dallas, plying his trade defiantly against the taunting hooped masses who will be questioning his parentage, species etc.
Now that would be far more entertaining than anything that might be going on on the pitch.
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