JOHANNESBURG – Forget the millionaire superstars from the soccer’s biggest teams. It is the tournament referees who are the World Cup’s most coddled and protected species.
The sending off of Brazil’s Kaka on Sunday night in a 3-1 win over the Ivory Coast was merely the latest in a litany of atrocious decisions by the men in the middle to cast a shadow over the sport’s showpiece event.
Kaka was given a second yellow card by French referee Stephane Lannoy when the Ivory Coast’s Kader Keita was not looking where he was going and collided heavily with the Brazil midfielder. Kaka merely held his ground for the inevitable contact, and the incident in no way warranted a free kick, let alone a yellow card.
A serious mistake was made. Kaka should suit up for Brazil in its Group G finale against Portugal on Friday but instead he will be suspended due to Lannoy’s erroneous red card.
So what about the repercussions for Lannoy?
Well, let’s see. First of all, he gets a chaffeur-driven ride back to the luxury base where all the World Cup officials are cloistered, away from the prying eyes of the media, or God forbid, the public.
Then, if he fancies it on Monday, Lannoy can get a nice massage from an on-site physiotherapist and some restaurant-quality room service before – and this is the best bit – consulting a ready-and-waiting sports psychologist to help him handle the stress of his exertions on Sunday night.
At no point will he be held accountable. At no point will he have to explain his decisions. Not to Kaka. Not to the fans. Not even to FIFA.
Lannoy’s performance will be evaluated like all others – by the FIFA referees committee. The review may be expedited due to the glaring nature of his errors. Yet until he is either called to officiate another game or removed from the final shortlist of elite refs who will take charge of the all-important knockout games, he can remain in his happy little bubble.
And therein lies the biggest problem with the World Cup.
Human error is part of sports and with FIFA having taken the decision to steer clear of video replay, it is inevitable. But this is the World Cup, the best of the best. Except for the men in charge.
Just two days after the United States had what would have been an invaluable victory stripped away by Mali official Koman Coulibaly, Lannoy messed up. Not once but twice.
First, he allowed Luis Fabiano to clearly handle the ball en route to scoring a spectacular goal that put Brazil up 2-0 on its way to a comfortable victory at Soccer City. Then, with time running out, he found himself in an obstructed position and misread the collision between Keita and Kaka. Ivory Coast head coach Sven-Goran Eriksson claimed that Brazil “shouldn’t complain, they got a goal for free and it changed everything.”
There is no foolproof solution to this, but if FIFA, as it insists, is truly interested in making sure its referees are up to international standard it has to stop treating them like children. Referees should be made available to questions from reporters after each game, so that the fans who have spent good money to come to the tournament or given their time to watch it on television can get some answers for why their team was gypped.
What we should be talking about is the brilliance of Brazil, which with two goals from Fabiano and one from Elano, produced the best display of this World Cup so far. We shouldn’t be talking about a Frenchman who works as a video games distributor when he is not taking charge of real life matches beamed around the world.
And he shouldn’t be talking to his psychologist tomorrow. He should be talking to us.
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