Filed under: European Soccer, Soccer
What's that old refrain about buying referees glasses ... or knee pads? (In this particular case, a linesman.)
Watch the above video carefully from this weekends match between Reading and Watford in the English League Championship. Note how the ball never crosses the line, yet is awarded a goal. Notice how sometime U.S. international Jay DeMerit -- the Watford captain -- protests the call to no avail.
This is one of the crazier things you'll ever see in a soccer game, and that's saying a lot. There were even calls to replay the game.
Naturally, in England this ought to stoke the flames about instant replay for officials. In a free-flowing game like soccer that would be a disaster, yet if the powers that be in the English FA studied what MLB is doing with home run calls and limit replay technology to only goals going over the line, it could work.
