Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » Rewarding the loyal refs for their dreadful decisions
By Walter Broeckx
Congratulations and celebrations,
When I tell everyone that you’re going to the world cup
Congratulations and jubilations,
I want the world to know I’m not surprised at all.
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Forgive me to have changed the lyrics of this old Cliff Richard song a bit.
The refs that are going to the world cup are known. And as I predicted a few months ago a certain Martin Hansson is going to the world cup.
Yes that Martin Hansson that didn’t see the hand of TH in the game against Ireland. In those days I told everyone that Hansson would be rewarded for this.
Now to make things clear, I am one of the few persons who does not hold Hansson responsible for not seeing the handball from TH.
In fact Hansson was at the right place when the ball came in and from his position he could not see TH and his arm. The only way he could have seen it was if he would have had some kind of ultra bionic supersonic eyes that can see right through a players body.
As a ref I know those things can happen that you cannot see it and I must say that handball is one of the fouls that is missed most, simply because of that.
In fact I feel it was the assistant referee who made the biggest mistake. From the different angles you could see that he was not unsighted and he should have taken his responsibility by raising his flag. He didn’t but at the end of the day an old saying in the referee world is you do the game with 3 and you win or lose it with 3. (Nowadays also 4 or 6). But is never good for a referee to be in the eye of the storm if you want to go to a world cup.
If this would have been all that surrounded Martin Hansson I would have said: it was a one day off, one mistake and like I said he cannot be blamed for not being able to see a player’s body.
But it was also the same ref who had the Porto – Arsenal game and who made a mess by allowing Porto’s second goal. Was the handball of TH something you could say this is bad luck for a ref? Maybe, but the goal he allowed Porto had nothing to do with bad luck. It had everything to do with bad refereeing and not known the rules.
I have written in two articles about the many mistakes he did make in that game so I’m not going to repeat them over here. One article in February right after the game and another article in April when our FA reminded us of how we should act in those circumstances in their magazines to the refs. So if you really want to know what rules he ignored you can find it on this site.
The fact is that missing something what you cannot see is something that is forgiven by FA and Uefa. It is the human factor. But clearly showing incompetence by not knowing the rules is something that Uefa or Fifa cannot ignore that easy. Those are things that can make or break a career from a ref.
So I was very curious to see if he would be included in the list of referees that would go to the world cup this summer. But to tell you the truth I was expecting Uefa and Fifa to send him.
If you take those two decisions you know that in the first one France was the benefiting country. You know France that country where a certain Mr. Platini comes from.
And the second decision was against Arsenal. You know Arsenal where there is a manager who is having many arguments with a certain Mr. Platini.
So I expected that Mr. Platini would reward ref Hansson with a place in the world cup. I even wrote it down in a never published article as we had enough articles on him and his decision in those days. I also wrote it down in the comment section in those days. I told you to keep your eyes open when the refs would be made public for the world cup. And so to me it was no big surprise to see Mr. Hansson’s name on the list.
But on the other hand, there seem to be other refs that have done some people some favours and had to be rewarded. Because normally there would have been 24 refs going to the world cup and now suddenly Fifa has decided to name 30 refs. It really would be interesting to see why Fifa has changed this number suddenly. And it is very interesting to see where the refs are coming from.
Two refs come over from New Zealand and also two refs from Mexico. I don’t know what their special merits are to allow people from those 2 countries, who are not known for their high standard in football, to send two refs to the world cup.
Or maybe it has something to do that they are a bit more “controllable” in the hands of Fifa? I will try to keep an eye on this during the world cup. As I really don’t care who will win it I think I can be considered a fair judge on refereeing issues in the world cup. I don’t know what Tony’s up to with the world cup but if he thinks it is a nice thing to fill up the dreadful dead season we face I will be glad to provide my view on the refs in the world cup. So it will make it a bit more interesting for myself and give me something to do.
O yes, for England a certain Howard Webb is going to the world cup. He “deserved” it most. I know what some people mean when they say “deserved”. You can fill it in as you like.
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