ercles on 30/6/2010 at 10:45
I was going to complain about the huge block of quote text, then I saw your nickname.
Kolya on 30/6/2010 at 11:31
The idea brought forth here that football needs to learn from forward thinking sports like American football made me think there may be a bit of a cultural barrier thing going on... So I got John Cleese to explain football for you:
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2sD_8prYOxo&showinfo=0&rel=0&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="385"/>
Are you following? Now this is what we end up with when going through with your brilliantly forward thinking ideas.
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2vJn5XxWg9U&showinfo=0&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"/>
You see the difference? So yes, I'm making a conservative statement for a sports game. However it's not nostalgia, because game rules, once defined, aren't subject to evolution as much as you like to think. The rules of chess won't change because computers play better check than even the most talented humans nowadays.
So the question is not whether you agree with the rules, it's whether you want to play.
DDL on 30/6/2010 at 11:47
I fail to see how "adding a goal line tracking tech" automatically means we suddenly move into ubertech corporate sponsored hellworld.
'Specially since..ffs: have you WATCHED football recently? We're already in ubertech corporate sponsored hellworld. This is not a tide being held back by valiant efforts to protect the goalmouth from technology.
Also, computers playing chess are PLAYING CHESS. Computers checking for actually scored goals are checking for actually scored goals. Not playing football.
A better analogy would be using fingerpress detecting computers to determine if a chess player actually had released a piece after moving, because the current human "piece release" judge makes bad calls. Except that isn't actually a problem in chess, so would be totally pointless.
Kolya on 30/6/2010 at 12:16
So you don't see how adding more technology might move us further into a direction which you agree we've moved into quite a bit already and which you also agree to be generally a bad idea.
Let me refer you back to this then:
Quote Posted by Kolya
Your ideas are born out of the mass marketing of football which is bad enough as it is, without leaking into the core elements of the game.
Now the referee is part of the same ruleset that defines the rest of the game. The fact that he doesn't play himself is as arbitrary a criterion as saying: The goalie is allowed to touch the ball with his hands, so we should replace him with a robot. It becomes quite apparent thus that the real criterion at work here is that you don't like this part of the rules.
DDL on 30/6/2010 at 12:32
Is it possible you could rein back the sweeping assumptions and ludicrous overexaggerations a little?
You're pretty much saying "we let a machine judge goals, and NEXT THEY'LL COME FOR OUR CHILDRENNNN!!!one"
Clear and (I would hope) obvious evidence, in the form of tennis and rugby, shows that allowing technology to assist the referee has in no way resulted in all players being replaced with cyborgs, or in every play being recreated in OMG HI TECH GFX ACTUALLY LETS JUST WATCH TEH GFX NOT TEH GAEM.
Football is already further down your putative path to robot domination (apparently), and yet still relies on some error prone dude to make critical calls. I don't think it's the line judge technology that does it, you know...
In essence, I think any sport that has the capacity to make more accurate calls in questionable cases, SHOULD DO SO. If the 100m sprint winner was (in close calls) determined by a guy in a chair next to the line saying "ohh..I reckon it was that fella there. yeah. Probably", would you agree that replacing that with a camera that records who actually crossed the line first would improve results?
I mean, I thought the idea was to watch sportsmen compete based on their merits, not for them to have to contend with arbitrary (and often demonstrably incorrect) decisions.
Kuuso on 30/6/2010 at 12:51
Kolya is full of shit. Lots of other people are too though, mainly the old farts sitting in the FIFA circles.
Anyways, video replays for goals - awesome and will happen in (near) future. Referee's are not the same as players. When a player fucks up, it's due to his skills vs opposition's skills (in general) and it's fair play that due to a players mistakes his team is punished (the opposing team scores for example). When a referee fucks up, his mistake punishes an "innocent" team. There's nothing good about that and is just simply unfair.
It's frustrating as a player and a spectator to see game-turning mistakes happen, when they could be easily and fastly decided by a replay. Personally, I would limit this only for goals, offiides and fouls are an another thing. I think it's ridiculous someone thinks the spirit of football is somehow in danger, because we want to cut out ridiculous mistakes made by the appointed judge that whole purpose is to judge these things accurately.
And yes, I've played football myself (even visited the youth national team, yay) and regularly follow my home town club's matches.
TL;DR Referees are not the same as players.
Kolya on 30/6/2010 at 12:56
DDL - Actually it's more like: We let a machine judge goals, and next they determine:
- whether a ball was out
- whether a foul was taking place
- whether the ball was offside
You won't have to think too much, you can just reuse the same arguments you've brought forth so far, for all of these incredible insecurities we've had to endure before technology came to the rescue. These are all critical and potentially erroneous judgements, since they're made by humans after all. And it doesn't seem so far fetched that you'd do just that, does it now?
Matthew on 30/6/2010 at 13:05
Quote Posted by Kolya
- whether the ball was offside
I'd rather they made a machine that could check if a player was offside. Particularly as linesmen are impressively shit at judging that a lot of the time, too.
Kolya on 30/6/2010 at 13:07
Yeah I'm sorry, I was struggling to find the correct translation for "Abseits" and so I wasn't paying enough attention. Rest assured that I know the offside rule. :)
Apart from that, you're confirming the slippery slope theory of course.
DDL on 30/6/2010 at 13:10
There's even been a nature paper on why linesmen make shitty calls sometimes:
(
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6773/full/404033a0.html)
And kolya: doesn't your list stop at the last point? You've given the impression that the next logical progression is
-they let robots play in goal
which is kinda a big jump.
There is a huge (and obvious, surely?) difference between judging play and playing.
ALSO: computers are unlikely to be sophisticated enough to judge fouls. The beauty of line calls is that they're boolean and absolute: it's out or in. Fouls are far, far more complicated, and so i doubt referees would ever be replaced by computers. They may, however, benefit from looking at a replay so they can use their very very human judgement to make the call. They'd just have a better view, thus be better informed.
