After some eight years of playing increasingly competitive soccer, my 13-year-old son Elliot finally got his first yellow card, which came in an otherwise unspectacular middle school league game. He got it for exactly what I would have expected – not a dirty play, but for complaining to the ref after a bad call. Basically, he got past a last defender with the ball and had an open shot at the goal. Then a ref called off-sides, which – and I’m incredibly sympathetic to the plight of youth soccer refs – was a bad call. The goal grasped from his foot, Elliot instinctively said to the ref, and as a parent I do not condone this, “Are you ____” – and I’ll allow you to finish the sentence with whatever phrase you deem most inappropriate.
I promise I’m not glorifying nor condoning talking back to a ref, even after a terrible call. And Elliot got a talking to. But this is more about context. At the time of the play in the second half, they led 3-2. That goal would have made it 4-2. Pretty much game over. Instead, after a bad call, Elliot came out with a yellow, and the other team scored to tie the game at three, which was the final score. So history reflects that Elliot’s school tied another school that day, a result that would have been different if the ref had gotten it right – and I know that none of this matters at all. It is simply a junior high soccer game.
So here's why I’m telling you all of this. Liverpool lost 2-1 to Tottenham last weekend in a match where they ended the game with only nine players on the field. But before mayhem transpired, Liverpool had a goal disallowed in the 34th minute with the score 0-0. An offsides call was made and confirmed by VAR – the electronic review system to ensure that close calls like these are made correctly. The problem here was that somehow a mistake still happened – not by the machine which got it right, but by the official overseeing the replay technology who wrongfully communicated with on-field umpires in something out of an Abbott and Costello routine, something discovered after the match. Which meant that Liverpool’s goal was taken away even though VAR confirmed it was actually legal. The game remained 0-0, and Tottenham rallied to win 2-1.
In light of this, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has asked the Premier League to replay the game. Not just because they got a call wrong, but because officials actually knew the right call and only erred because of a communication error. It would be like putting someone in jail because the judge read the wrong note from the jury. The argument is that this decision “undermined sporting integrity” – and a replay would be the only way to fix it.
Of course, we all largely assume this won’t happen, and for a long list of reasons. Perhaps the most obvious is precedent, since replaying games after bad calls would be like redoing every wedding where someone drinks too much. Beyond that, it’s not entirely clear this is within the rules, although there are provisions for replaying games, even if they’ve never been used in the Premier League. For that and perhaps 100 other reasons, this request will go nowhere. And of course, who knows if Liverpool would have fared better in the match after going up 1-0, although I imagine they would.
But the real word that’s unsaid yet at the core of this whole situation is “fair,” a term at the core of human sensibility despite its uneven interpretation and application. Part of why technology based officiating solutions are created is to help make sure sports are fair, so the most deserving team wins, not the luckiest. And yet it’s important to realize that complete fairness is not only unlikely – it’s not entirely what we want, at least not at the expense of what makes sport immediate. Watching a make-up game would be as satisfying as having a second surprise party because your cousin was late. The immediacy and unpredictability and yes, even the inevitable inequity of live sports is what makes it different than a Netflix binge series. So while Jurgen Klopp is right in saying this undermined sporting integrity, he’s wrong in thinking a redo would make it better.
Anyway, if we’re going to start replaying soccer games with bad calls, I don’t think Liverpool/Tottenham is the place. In fact, I’d suggest we test this first at a middle school in New Jersey.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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