As inevitably as light shines with sunrise, the video-replay of controversial decisions or no-decisions in soccer is coming. We can bleat all we like, we can say that if we trained referees right, the game wouldn’t need replays, we can say that mistakes are part of the game and that players and coaches make more mistakes than referees do, we can say that the situations are so rare that the technology is not cost-effective, but all of that is not going to make any difference. Here’s why.

The Premiership in England is the most-publicized league in the world. It has players from many different countries, and is broadcast all over the planet to fans everywhere. But more important than the audience it gets, is that it is refereed by professional officials under contract and systematically trained. This has been going on for several years, yet even those officials make mistakes in which video replay might help. And the whole world watches.

Goals are missed; dives get 9.9s not cards; nasty fouls go unpunished; offside decisions go awry, and as we saw recently in the game between Manchester City and Portsmouth on August 23, a referee missed one of the worst incidents of violent conduct I have ever seen. The crowd screams for infallibility, and TV replay seems to be the only way.

More than all that, however, is that the man in charge of the referees in the Premiership, is one Keith Hackett, ex-FIFA referee, author of the 1986 book Hackett’s Law, and a firm believer that we must embrace technology wherever it can help. He uses a multi-camera recording system to evaluate referees, measure their running, determine their distance from events and so on. Keith even used the “Angle of View” CD to show referees why they missed fouls even though close to play. (The CD was produced here, but is not used by the U.S. Soccer Federation. Go figure.)

Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League, announced a few days ago that in their summer meeting, clubs demanded goal-line technology to determine goal/no goal. (Remember World Cup final 1966; and remember the “goal” in Manchester United against Tottenham Hotspur, in January of 2005.) So four little cameras will be attached to the goalposts, perhaps for the 2007-2008 season.

There will be some problems to resolve, like what to do when play should continue after a ball near the goal-line wasn’t a goal. And there is the small matter of Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, who is dead-set against such technology, declaring that “..we should live with the errors, not only errors of the players and coaches, but also errors of the referees.”