Taking life philosophically.
12 July 2010
After two referee errors in FIFA World Cup 2010 there have been calls to begin using video technology to help football1 referees make some of the difficult and important decisions they have to make. I is argued that, like in some other sports, the referee should be able to consult a video replay before making a decision.
I am arguing against the adoption of video technology, not because I think it would harm the sport, but because I know of no good reasons to adopt it. I believe those who favor such technology are in favor of it because they see it as a way to make football more meritocratic. I also think they underestimate how many other non-meritocratic elements there are in the sport.
Unless convincing distinctions between different non-meritocratic elements are presented, adopting video technology can only be part of a larger project that may have unwanted effects on the game.
It is my understanding that the calls for use of replays are motivated by the desire to make the sport more meritocratic. There are of course many kinds of merit, and I hope to avoid discussing what merit is. What is important to my argument is that there are things that clearly do not constitute merit:
Having the referee consult a video replay after an event like these two would arguably make football more meritocratic, as it would be easier to recognize merit. And it is of course obvious that merit should be recognized and rewarded in sporting competitions. As Sigmund Loland writes,
the institutional goal of [sporting games] is to measure, compare, and finally rank the participants according to performance of athletic skills as defined in the rules of the relevant game. In other words, in sporting games, the predominant distributive norm is meritocratic.2
It is possible to come close to eliminating referee mistakes completely, but this requires more extensive use of video technology than anyone hopes for. It is generally agreed that no technology should harm the flow of the game, and therefore only important events should be checked.
If video technology is to be adopted, it will be an arbitrary decision where to draw the line between important events that should be checked from a replay and less important ones that should not be checked. Some have mentioned goals, potential fouls in the penalty zone and red cards as examples. But by the same standard, potential offsides and fouls around the penalty zones could count as well. Some of the flow would necessarily be sacrificed, and there is no obvious answer how much is too much.
In addition to the limited abilities of even the best referee, there are several other non-meritocratic elements at play. However, the existence of such elements is sometimes ignored when calling for the use of video technology.
In an open stadium, weather conditions can have a dramatic effect on the game. Imagine a match in which one team gets an early goal, and soon afterwards heavy rain erupts and continues for the rest of the match, spoiling the opponents’ chances of creating decent scoring opportunities. The meritocratic solution to this would be to move the matches indoors. This, along with the use of artificial turf, would ensure consistent and equal weather and pitch conditions.
The equipment used is a non-meritocratic element as well. There has been debate over the Jabulani ball used in the 2010 tournament, as some teams have had more experience with it. The ball has been used for example in the German Bundesliga, and it has been argued that this has given the German team an advantage. The implication is of course that the Germans did not merit this advantage.
One solution to this would be to let each team choose the ball for each half, as was allegedly done in the 1930 World Cup final between Argentina and Uruguay.
It is also an interesting question whose merit we are considering. If we are only interested in the merits of the players, the first step would be to remove coaches, or assign a random coach (or a random coaching team) to each team. A good coach gives a team an unmerited strategic advantage, and what exacerbates the issue is that the better teams often have better coaches.
If we think that the coach is a part of the team whose merit we are considering, there are still many other similar issues. For example, rich countries often have more money to spend on training facilities and tools. It would be possible to set a limit on training budgets, although the best players would still benefit from the facilities of the rich club teams they play for throughout most of the year.
No matter what we do, the conditions will never be completely equal. The question is when they are equal enough. This is what Loland thinks:
To sum up, we can say that the norm on equal opportunity to perform is met if unfair advantages due to rule violations are eliminated or compensated in the best possible way under the circumstances, and if inequalities due to uncontrollable external conditions do not exert significant and systematic influence on the outcome.3
According to this, there are two conditions that need to be satisfied. I have not heard anyone argue that whatever inequalities there may be exert systematic influence on the outcome. Nobody systematically suffers injustice in football. Therefore it is only a question of whether or not the unfair advantages are eliminated or compensated in the best possible way under the circumstances. It is an interesting but difficult question.
Those who favor the technology tend either just to assume that it would improve football, or fail to think about the matter on a general level, just reiterating the facts about referee mistakes and believing that, given those facts, the conclusion favorable to video technology automatically follows. Essentially, those who support the adoption of video technology would need to argue that such technology would make football a better game. So far I have not heard anyone make that argument.
Finally, even if we ignore all the external circumstances, much of the actual play depends on chance. For example, when it is a question of centimeters in a long-range shot, it is beyond the skills and the accuracy of even the best player: even if the goal by Lampard had stood, it would still have been a stroke of luck for him and his team, since the shot could have just as easily bounced back from the crossbar.
Even when the ball really goes in, some goals have more merit than others. When after a few good passes and a powerful shot the ball is literally in the back of the net, the goal is surely of great merit. When the opponent scores an own goal, there is less merit, and there is not much more merit when a technically awful shot barely manages to put the ball over the line. However, it is a happy coincidence that often the goals with the most merit are the ones least likely to go unnoticed by the referee. If a valid goal is not recognized, often enough it has little merit to begin with.
Thus we arrive at the paradox that with more accuracy in recognizing goals, luck may actually play a greater role because goals that are goals only barely (and the ones that therefore have less merit) are more likely to count. Loland has an example from short-distance running:
Still the victory is not based on merit alone. The chest that breaks the finishing line a few millimeters in front of a competitor is not only an outcome of a well planned race and deliberate tactics. One hundred of a second is beyond the margins within which a sprinter, perceptually and cognitively, can be in full control. The paradox, then, is that whereas the intention is to increase accuracy of performance evaluation and degree of meritocratic justice, finely tuned measurement technology seems to increase the degree of randomness.4
In the end one has to realize that football, just like many other sports, is a game of merit, but also of luck. So far, even ignoring the external circumstances, I have not heard of a good answer to the question of when it would be meritocratic enough.
In any case, when making decisions about these issues makes it unavoidable to enter the debate about which non-meritocratic elements are part of the game and which ones are not. These debates are inconclusive, and it is not necessary to enter them unless what is thought to be a problem seriously undermines the sport.
I do not think football is seriously undermined by the two incidents I mentioned. After an admittedly slow start, the 2010 World Cup offered great matches, and arguably the best teams found their way to the final games.
Unless convincing reasons are presented, it is not justified to adopt video technology as a way to make football more meritocratic while ignoring the existence of all the other non-meritocratic elements. I am not arguing that human referees are an essential part of the game, although it could be argued as well. What I am saying is that video replay technology is no different from any other method of making football more meritocratic, and if these other methods are ignored, the use of video technology should be similarly ignored. Football is fine as it is.
The journal of Timo Laine (contact information). Cultural commentary from the perspective of a philosophy student in Helsinki.