Soccer will continue to rely on human judgment when it comes to disputed goals after the game’s rule-makers flatly rejected the use of video and chip technology now and in the foreseeable future.
Goalline technology will be back on the agenda when soccer’s rule-making body meets on Saturday following a series of high-profile refereeing controversies.
The International Football Association Board (IFAB) will be presented with two possible systems although officials are in no hurry to implement technology and its use at this year’s World Cup is out of the question.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter needed to put pressure on South Africa’s World Cup organizers to increase the pace of preparations but the country was a good choice to host the 2010 finals, he said on Tuesday.
Blatter used a news conference marking 100 days to the start of the tournament on June 11 to again round on those who doubted South Africa had the capacity to stage the 32-team event.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Thursday he would have to face an Asian challenge when he stands for re-election next year.
“There will be candidates for the presidency for the FIFA presidency in 2011, from Asia,” he told reporters without giving further details.
Asian Football Confederation (AFC) head Mohamed Bin Hammam will propose that the president of soccer’s world governing body FIFA should have a maximum reign of eight years.
Qatari Bin Hammam told Thursday’s edition of the English daily newspaper The Guardian that he had support for the idea from other members on FIFA’s executive committee ahead of their meeting in March.
At 100, Francisco Varallo remembers everything: the thud of the heavy leather ball, playing while injured because substitutions were not allowed and, more than anything, the game that got away.
Varallo, the last survivor of the first World Cup final, marked his 100th birthday last week in his hometown near Buenos Aires by recalling the 1930 clash between his country and neighboring Uruguay.
Soccer’s rule-making body will discuss the use of goal-line technology, players feinting in the run-up to take penalties and extra linesmen behind the goals at its meeting in March.
The International Football Association Board (IFAB) will also consider changes to rules concerning the treatment of injured players, according the to agenda published by FIFA on Friday, and debate an end to automatic sendings-off for players who deny the opposition a goal-scoring chance.
The 2018 World Cup finals could be held in Asia or the United States, even though pressure is growing to restrict the bidding only to European candidates, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Friday.
Blatter, holding a news conference ahead of the final weekend of the African Nations Cup, repeated the view he expressed earlier this week in Madrid when he suggested that the bidding might be changed for European candidates only, but at the moment it remained open to all the candidates.
A deal is being discussed whereby only European nations would bid to host the 2018 World Cup, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Monday.
Russia and England have applied separately to stage the 2018 and/or the 2022 World Cup while Spain and Portugal and Netherlands and Belgium have made joint bids for one or both.
France striker Thierry Henry will not be punished over the handball incident which led to his team’s equalizer in the 1-1 World Cup qualifying playoff against Ireland in November, FIFA said on Monday.
A FIFA disciplinary committee decided there was no mechanism for punishing Henry over his part in one of the game’s most controversial goals since Diego Maradona’s so-called “Hand of God” effort for Argentina against England at the 1986 World Cup.