Tony BeccaTony Becca
WHENEVER TWO teams go onto a football field the aim is to score goals and to prevent goals from scoring against them and the one which succeeds in doing both is the winner.
Some times, however, a team will prevent the other from scoring a goal, score one, and still do not win and that was the case in the English Premier League match between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford last Tuesday.
Under pressure for most of the match and after preventing United from scoring, Spurs apparently snatched the winner with a minute to go when Pedro Mendes, playing in the midfield, ran on to a clearance from United's goalkeeper Roy Carroll, saw the goalkeeper out of his goal, and from some 50 yards out, lobbed the ball towards goal.
Carroll, back-pedalling desperately, got back in time and got his hands on the ball only to drop it over the line.
To the surprise of the Spurs players, however, referee Mark Clattenburg, rated one of the country's best, waved play on, and that was that. The match ended in a 0-0 draw.
Looking at the incident on television, and even before the countless slow-motion replays, it was obvious that the ball had crossed the goal line. In fact, when the ball dropped out of Carroll's hands it landed at least a metre beyond the line. The ball landed and then bounced so far inside the goal that in scrambling for it and knocking it back into play, Carroll ended up in the net at the back of the goal.
Why then was the goal disallowed?
IN THE PITCH
According to one explanation, Clattenburg was way down the pitch at the time, he was in no position to see that the ball had crossed the line. When he looked at Rob Lewis, his assistant on the line, there was no response, and although the goalkeeper must have known that it was a goal, that meant it was not a goal that despite the evidence and the obvious, the ball, in the opinion of both officials, had not crossed the line.
Remembering that scoring goals is the objective of both teams on the field, that after 90 minutes some matches finish without either side scoring even one goal, and that one goal can win a match, it is strange that in this day and age when techno-logy is available that something like that can still happen in professional sport that a team can be denied a goal that has been legitimately scored.
WIN SOME, LOSE SOME
According to Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United who compared Spurs misfortune with his own disappointment when
his team hit the Spurs goalpost, and when, in his opinion, the referee did not award his team a penalty, it's all in the game, you win some and you lose some, and he is right.
There is a difference, however, between what happened to United and what happened to Spurs, and it is that instead of scoring a goal, United hit the post, that the referee obviously believe the foul on Rio Ferdinand merited a penalty, and that Spurs scored a goal and not with the ball trickling over the line or dropping close to the line.
According to Spurs manager Martin Jol, it wasn't like the World Cup final of 1966 when the ball (one of England's goals) dropped from the crossbar and landed only a couple of centimetres either side of the line.
"I don't want to call it a disgrace," said Jol, "but it is a disgrace because there's so much technology in the world and in football we have to look at things like this after a game".
Jol is right no question about it, and although FIFA has long resisted the use of techno-logy to assist referees it is obvious that they do need help and that FIFA should provide them with it, and definitely so when it comes to the lines.
A goal is too important for a team to be denied one, to be robbed of victory simply because the referee finds himself in a position where he cannot see that the ball has crossed the line and because his assistant is also so badly positioned that he too cannot see and is therefore of little or no help.
