How would football benefit from a Rugby style TMO?

12 October 2015 08:37

In the light of the Rugby World Cup, there has been a lot of talk about introducing a TMO (Television Match Official) system in football. It’s a topic that has divided fans for years but now with the TMO system is firmly in the spotlight, FIFA and UEFA might want to take note it.

As it is there has only been only technology integration into football, in the form of goal-line technology, and this has only been adopted by a few competitions, such as the World Cup and the Premier League.

Personally I’ve felt for a while that football should have some sort of review system, or at least something for the referees to refer to if they haven’t seen an incident.

For example, take the Chelsea vs Arsenal in September. The referee sent off Gabriel and let Diego Costa of but on appeal Gabriel’s red card was rescinded and Costa was given a ban.

Even though there are measures in place that say that if the referee doesn’t see an incident the FA can take action, there are still many problems that the FA aren’t allowed to get involved with.

The main issue that I can think of is awarding goals or penalties. TMO would be very useful in this instance as currently we only have the referee’s word and goal-line technology to make decisions.

Other bodies such as the dubious goals committee are not allowed to award goals or amend score lines, just decide the person who is credited with the goal or the assist.

I wouldn’t want results changed after a match has ended, and I’m sure no one else would either, so why don’t we propose a system where the referee can get the call right first time to take out the incidents were goals and penalties are debated.

An extra match official would be much cheaper than retraining referees and would be a short-term ix to the issues of surrounding poor refereeing in the BPL.

However it would have to be a worldwide changed rather than a system that is only implemented in just one league as then there would the issue of refereeing standards falling behind the rest of the world.

I asked the question “Would football benefit for a rugby style TMO?” on Twitter and I thought I should reply to some of the responses:

@CCFC_Central said “No. Rugby allows medics on the pitch. Football is a fast paced sport and referees mistakes are part of the game.”

I agree that football is a faster paced sport but rugby is fast too. I’m not sure how having medics on the effects the pace of the game too much. I agree that referee’s mistakes are part of the game but there is a point where some mistakes are going to make such bad decisions that they will stop a team being promoted or winning a title, which I’m sure that no one wants to see.

@DavidR_147 said “Adding TMO would take away the mess of getting off side’s wrong, if used in the right way it would be a good thing.”

Off sides are by far the most common wrong decisions that we see in football, which is bad because we have two officials on the pitch whose job it’s make the call. Perfect example of this is the Spurs vs Manchester City match last month. The result would be very different if Kevin De Bruyne or Kyle Walker were ruled to be offside, which they were.

@ngriffiths73 said “No, it wouldn’t like it all the time like rugby but if they did have it maybe give managers 3 [challenges] each game which they can use at any time.”

There’s no doubt that it would have to be limited like in tennis or cricket. No one would want to see every offside, goal, free kick, yellow or red card being checked. The game wouldn’t low right. I can’t stand watching American football because it take three hours to watch one hour worth of play and I can imagine that there is a danger of that happening if TMO in football isn’t managed properly. One thing I would like to add is that the challenges should be handed to the captains and not the managers as they are in better positions to make the call on whether to use them or not.

Source: DSG