After venturing forth from the gas lamp-lit hovel that he presumably calls home for the first time in over a century, Ol’ Sepp Blatter looks to have greeted the new world that lay in wait for him – a world with printed word, left-handed scissors and votes for women – with a sense of wide-eyed, childish wonder.
Such was Sepp’s awestruck amazement at this newly-industrialised utopia that he was almost immediately struck by blinding white light, through which emerged a strange, shimmering, all-encompassing epiphany.
“Maybe small cameras aren’t just the feverish imaginings of a tortured mind. Maybe goal-line technology really could work within the context of a football match.”
Saints. Be. Farkin’. Praised.
After several years of near-incessant clamour from nigh-on everybody, FIFA president Blatter has performed what can only be described as a minor miracle by seemingly backing calls for goal-line technology to be introduced.
The 74-year-old Swiss dumpling told CNN that, should he be presented with a goal-line system that ‘works’, then he and his organisation will set about taking steps to integrate it into the game as soon as possible, despite the Gallic grumblings of his old fuddy-duddy counterpart over at UEFA, Michel Platini:
“My position is that if [the goal-line systems] work then we will do it. If there is one of these systems that is accurate and immediate, and also not too complicated, then I think goal-line technology has a good chance to be accepted (by the International FA Board).
If it works, the board will say ‘Yes’, even if they’re conservative.
Platini is totally against any technical device because he’s afraid that when we are in the goal-line technology we could (introduce plans for similar systems) on the 18-yard line or the offside position or whatever, but for the time being we are talking about only goal-line technology.”
Platini, the stickler for human error that he is, will travel to Wales in March, with the express intent of preventing the IFAB (i.e. football’s law-makers) green-lighting trials for all the various goal-line system proposals – though the influence of Blatter’s apparent volte face may just be enough to sway the international panel, which is made up of FIFA delegates, who command four votes, and members of the four British Football Associations, who all have one vote each.
Just try not to let Ol’ Sepp catch sight of a Sinclair C5 or a calculator-watch.
The poor lamb’s seen enough of this new-age of technological boom-and-bust to last him a life time.
Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise that Blatter immediately reverted to atavistic type when faced with questions over a reform of FIFA’s ‘highly-vulnerable’ (to put it politely) voting techniques – effectively telling the gathered media to b*ll*cks by blindly insisting that his nefarious empire is almost entirely (he gave himself a 10% margin for error) squeaky clean.
I’ll let you make your own minds up on that one.
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