On Soccer, Instant Replay, and Culture

With apologies to Brad Oremland, here are five quick thoughts on the World Cup before I get to the main thrust of my article.

1. If Cristiano Ronaldo was American, he would be a "Jersey Shore" boy. I'm not sure I've ever encountered an athlete as easy to hate.

2. I hate that the U.S. lost, but the more I think about it, the more I am happy it was to Ghana. Besides the fact that it would lift the spirits of an impoverished region, Ghana gives us guys like this and forces us to answer questions like this.

3. I also love that either Ghana or Uruguay is guaranteed to make the semifinals. Only three teams left have won the World Cup since 1954.

4. I don't know how I feel about ESPN's promos and cutaways being voiced by this stereotypical African voice. I don't envisage them doing some sort of "zis is ze World Cup" if it was in France, for example.

5. I seem to be the only one, but I don't mind the vuvuzelas and I think they add atmosphere to the matches.

Although they bowed out in the second round, thank God the United States won Group C. That meant the two controversial no-goal calls against them (as well as a red-card-warranting elbow to Clint Dempsey's nose that the referee missed) mattered not at all. You can't improve on first place in the group, and the knockout rounds are not seeded.

It is also with a sigh of relief that I note England's terrible no-goal call against Germany and Argentina's miles-offside goal against Mexico did not occur in hotly disputed, close matches. It's reasonable to argue that getting those calls right would have changed the course and perhaps the outcome of the game, but it's not a foregone conclusion.

However, a World Cup match where a blown call occurs during an unmistakably deciding moment — say, the last few seconds of injury time — will happen. It's a matter of when, not if. And if FIFA seems embarrassed and scrambling now, just wait until they see the hue and cry when the big one hits.

They can do something about it, of course. They can bring instant replay, or at least goal line technology somewhat like they have in tennis, into the game.

When the spate of bad calls started pouring in, I was only nominally in favor of rectifying it with replay. I am just about the biggest replay proponent you can be, in all sports. I say, damn the time delays, get it right, and use it in all situations where there is a reasonable argument for it (I think the NFL gets this mostly right ... using it for penalties like pass interference is just way too subjective. I'm not a madman).

But I'm also leery of the condescending, U.S.-centric "Hey world, I have an idea to fix your beloved sport" attitude that is almost as common as snobbish decrees of American sports' superiority during World Cup time. If we are going to view the World Cup with an open mind, it has to be on soccer's own terms, not as some sort of American sports missionary.

All that is true, but listening to several British World Cup podcasts revealed a stunning fact to me. You know those other sports we Americans don't give a damn about? Cricket? Rugby League? Rugby Union?

Instant replay is a part of those sports.

So you see, it's not just an American idea that instant replay has a place in sports. It's a universal concept that is embraced by all team sports with a large following. FIFA is truly a dinosaur with its lack of instant replay. The only other holdout seems to be Aussie Rules Football.

So clamoring for instant replay does not make you the Ugly American. Voices from many countries are singing in this choir. That said, I must take issue with the idea that it is hurting the sport's credibility with the American public.

So much hand-wringing is done over how to get Americans interested in soccer, and many ignorant pundits are willing to watch a couple matches and declare they have discovered the Big Reason We Don't Like Soccer.

I have news for those pundits. It doesn't matter whether or not they adopt instant replay in soccer. It doesn't matter what radical rules they implement to make it more like American sports (not that they ever would). Soccer will lag behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey in the U.S. for at least the next half-century, and the best we soccer fans can realistically hope for is a modestly successful MLS and a continuously competitive national team.

Why? For the same reason it is so popular in so many other countries. It's ingrained in us. Our culture is not a soccer culture. More than fashion, language, or most anything else you can think of, new sports take root and grows into redwoods only after many, many decades. How long have the big four American sports been the big four? Sixty years, at least?

I'm trying to think of new sports that have "caught on" in the U.S. recently and the closest I can think of is the X-Games, which is about as niche as you can get. There is nothing inherent about soccer that makes it better or worse than American sports. There is nothing in soccer's DNA or in Americans' DNA that makes us less able to appreciate it. It's just that, for whatever reason, soccer's worldwide popularity spread gave Northern North America a miss and ... that's that.

But please, FIFA, give us instant replay. The two arguments I heard against it on the round of podcasts are both incredibly weak. The first is that it's a slippery slope. Today we are reviewing goals, tomorrow offsides, and the next thing you know the ref has been replaced by an android.

Oh, how I hate the slippery slope argument. I hate it in sports. I hate it in politics. I hate it everywhere. Each idea deserves to be examined on its own merit, because you can't say for sure that it will lead to anything else.

But in this case, the slippery slope is especially odious because that slope would be a good thing to slide down. Let's look at those offsides calls. Let's see if it should be a corner or a goal kick.

The second argument is FIFA casts a very wide net. They are, more or less, the governing body of the entire world of soccer. Instant replay might work when Manchester United plays Chelsea, but not when Bobo Sport plays Etoile Filante Ouagadougou.

So, since we can't have replay justice all of the time, let's never have it? That doesn't fly with me. FIFA wants to be "consistent" across the globe, but it would be consistent. It's not as though the Burkinabe league would be playing nine-on-nine.

Yes, FIFA, in the last couple days, you have agreed to revisit the issue — for goal line decisions only. Good. It's a start. Now make the right decision.