How does it help sports if referees admit their errors onthe field?
In Germany over the weekend, an experienced FIFA official,Wolfgang Stark, admitted to journalists waiting outside his dressing room afterthe match that he got it wrong when he gave a penalty and ordered off Dortmunddefender Marcel Schmelzer during the first half.
The decision changed the game. The mea culpa changednothing.
Borussia Dortmund, unbeaten in its previous 12 games in theBundesliga, the German Cup and the Champions League, lost, 3-2, at home toWolfsburg. And Dortmund, Germany’s champion for the past two seasons, has nowquite possibly lost its title to the resurgent Bayern Munich.
While that controversy was going on in the Bundesliga,Arsenal benefited from two penalties in winning its home game, 2-0, againstWest Bromwich Albion on Saturday.
Both penalties were dubious calls. Even Arsene Wenger, theArsenal manager, called one of them “a little bit lucky.” And that, from Wenger“ or from most modern coaches “ is rare.
The referee at Arsenal, Mike Jones, did what referees in thePremiership are advised to do. He kept silent.
But the status quo between players, managers and matchofficials in the global game has become a Faustian pact. It is built ondistrust. Players, we know, will swear that they never touched the ball withtheir hand, never touched an opponent. Players will go down in the penalty box,touched or not, if they think they can deceive the arbiter and gain anunwarranted penalty kick.
What they all know “ players, officials and managers alike “is that every league match is televised these days. And every incident willhave TV replays giving angles and perceptions the human eye cannot always seeat full speed.
The postgame hiatus comes down to this: Was Stark wise to admithis oversight in Dortmund, or was Jones wiser to purse his lips and walk on bythe waiting media pack? Either way, the decisions are not redeemable. Thefirst, and last, rule in the book is that the referee’s decision is final.
FIFA, however, can do something about the diktat thatamounts to triple jeopardy for a defender in Schmelzer’s situation. He wasdeemed to have handled the ball on his goal line. That, under the current rulesset by FIFA and the international board, is a compulsory red card, a penalty,and an automatic one-match ban.
Schmelzer may not suffer the third part of that punishmentbecause the Bundesliga will, in the light of Stark’s confession of error,rescind the ban. However, he still missed two-thirds of the game Saturday, hestill suffered an erroneous penalty that tied the score, and he had to watch ashis team, so totally dominant in the opening half hour, wearily suffered a lossthat changes its season.
There were 80,000 judges on the ground, overwhelminglyDortmunders, who did not see what Stark thought he saw in that 36th minute.There were at least 14 TV cameras, and it took only one of those to show inslow motion close-up that Schmelzer stopped the ball with his thigh. True, theball did then rebound to slightly brush his hand. But that was involuntary, asthe referee later admitted. “I’ve looked at it again,” Stark told reporters.``It was an error of perception on my part.
“I’m sorry, that should not happen,” he said. “The penaltyand the red card were a mistake on my part. That’s annoying.”
Annoying, too, was the way in which every Wolfsburg playerwithin shouting distance of the referee called for the penalty, and theexpulsion. Some, perhaps, were as fooled by the moment as Stark was. Othersprobably were not, and the lack of a handshake between the team’s coaches atthe end suggested the ill feeling that emanated from that instant.
Some years ago, UEFA invited a journalist to a conferencewith elite referees. Should referees, like players and coaches, give postgameinterviews? After a mock question and answer session in which the reporterasked questions based on views the refs had not seen, it was decided thatreferees had nothing to gain from cross-examination.
I was that journalist.
