Now Can We Have Instant Replay?

Wall Street Journal

We know what the proper and sporting thing to say here is. Great game, Germany. You really stuck it to England in Sunday's World Cup match, you clearly had the fitter team, you dominated the pitch and deserved to win. Bravo, Deutschland. Fantastic hair, too.


Did you see this madness? You have to have seen it by now! It's going to be replayed so often for the next four years they might as well print it on the £5 note. It's made England so mad that it has stopped insisting that its torpid and underachieving national team walk home from South Africa.

OK, kidding about that last part. England's still seething at its boys. Wayne Rooney probably wishes he played soccer for France.

But at least there's now a big video controversy to distract the angry mob. Down 2-1 in the first half of Sunday's round-of-16 match to dreaded rival Germany, England's Frank Lampard lifted a shot that hit the crossbar and appeared to land behind the German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer—and the white line.

It was bizarre. We were all supposed to awkwardly ignore Mr. Lampard's equalizer, like a guest who'd arrived at a formal dinner party not wearing any pants. Germany went on to dominate the second half and win efficiently and decisively, 4-1.

And then it happened again, just hours later. In the first half of the contest between Argentina and Mexico, referees missed a blatant offside call against Argentina in allowing a Carlos Tévez header goal that made it 1-0. Argentina wound up winning, 3-1.

If you're mannerly, scared or a high-ranking FIFA official, you need to keep telling yourself that England and Mexico weren't going anywhere, anyway, that even if Mr. Lampard's goal had been allowed or Mr. Tévez's had been denied, the complexion of the game wouldn't have dramatically changed, and the outcome would have been identical.

Probably true—but totally lame. We've officially reached our limit with a balky game that continues to deny basic modernity. If Larry King can become pals with Ryan Seacrest, then any sport can embrace some instant replay.

We thought the replay debate would end for good after a baseball umpire's ghastly call stole a perfect game to Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga. But this World Cup is making backward baseball look like "Blade Runner."

Who is left to defend the lack of replay in modern sport? Basically, it's down to The Romantics, The Slippery Slopers and the Laughably Impatient. Here's a rundown of each holdout camp:

The Romantics: Ruminative counterintuitive-ists, often literary, inclined to dress in tweed and grow unkempt facial hair. Insist that controversy is part of sport, that arguments over officiating mistakes actually boost fan passion and fuel mystique. See cosmic significance in England's getting stiffed on a call Sunday, 44 years after Englishman Geoff Hurst's controversial goal against Germany in 1966. Enjoy writing long and pretentious comments on Internet message boards, or starting loud, boorish disputes with strangers in airport bars.

The Slippery Slopers: Luddite Cassandras. Worry that any introduction of replay technology will send us spiraling downward to the point where all games will eventually played by soulless robots, just like pro golf. Argue that as soon as you start reviewing goals, you'll start reviewing offsides, then yellow cards, and then Diego Maradona's suits, and pretty soon you're wrestling Mr. Maradona on the floor at a press conference, and he's actually still very strong, but at least he smells like flowers and chocolate-chip cookies.

The Laughably Impatient: Always in a hurry. Come on! They have stuff to do. They have absolutely no time for any instant replay, for any official who wants to pause the clock and make things right. They watch TV standing up, feed themselves nachos intravenously and never even use the restroom. They want this World Cup game to be over right now, so they can go and spend 90 minutes reading ESPN.com and another 30 scouring vuvuzelas on eBay.

What do all of these anti-replay-ites have in common? They are not Frank Lampard. They don't play for Mexico. They may work for FIFA. They are happy to stand in the way of accuracy because they're stubborn. It's not petty or whiny to say that mistakes are overshadowing this World Cup. Instead of golden goals, we're getting too many garbled ones.

Early Cancellation
When Landon Donovan scored in stoppage time against Algeria on Wednesday to send the U.S. into the knockout round, we thought it would finally do away with the "Soccer is Boring" critics in this country, and at least briefly quiet the skeptics who love to dismiss the home team as second-rate. But now, here the cranks come again, after the U.S. dropped a 2-1 extra-time match to Ghana on Saturday. This is silly. The U.S. didn't get bounced because it lacked skill or heart. The Americans got bounced because they dangerously kept treating their matches like the prosecutors on "Law & Order": They didn't pay attention to the first half of the show. And like "Law & Order," they got cancelled and will be missed.