Fan 1: Boy, there sure have been a lot of bad calls at this World Cup, no? The phantom offsides against the U.S. England's no-goal goal. Argentina's offsides goal.

Fan 2: Yes, it's been terrible. Surely, though, international soccer/football's governing body, FIFA, has a plan to put an end to such controversies.

Fan 1: Why, they do indeed!

Fan 2: Excellent! What do they have in mind? A long-overdue instant replay system, perchance?

Fan 1: Well, replay is involved -

Fan 2: Terrific! Better late than never, I suppose -

Fan 1: ...but replay is only involved because FIFA's actual plan is to censor replays inside stadiums, so fans can't decide for themselves whether or not a call was bad in the first place.

Fan 2: wut

In no way does that plan (or, admittedly, that dialogue) make the slightest bit of sense. But indeed, that is FIFA's real plan. Really, it was their plan all along to completely insulate themselves from any potential controversy - showing the replay on England's no-goal goal was, as FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot said, "a clear mistake."

Maingot then added, "We will work on this and be a bit more, I would say, tight on this for the games to be played." There is no word on whether he followed that up by laughing maniacally and slithering away to FIFA's top-secret guarded underground fortress.

OK, so maybe the "real" purpose of censoring replays is to avoid the risk of rioting crowds, but it's still absolutely mind-boggling that, rather than do anything about a clear problem that has plagued several critical games at what is by far its biggest showcase tournament, FIFA is content to act like a problem doesn't exist and that the real problem is that those damn fans keep figuring out that there are all these screwups.

How obvious is it that instant replay is needed? Witness this bigsoccer.com post, titled, "FIFA's resistance to instant replay has become farcical." We'd certainly understand if events from this World Cup led author Aaron Stollar to his conclusion...only the post is from last November.

So, the need for instant replay is SO obvious that it was blindingly clear even months before bad calls started marring the World Cup left and right. But FIFA president Sepp Blatter says:

"No matter which technology is applied, at the end of the day a decision will have to be taken by a human being. This being the case, why remove the responsibility from the referee to give it to someone else?"

Um, because the quality of refereeing borders on complete incompetence? It's enough of an insult to fans that FIFA flatly refuses to entertain an idea that would improve the quality of officiating - and therefore, the sport. But the fact that FIFA acts like the problem isn't even there, and that the real issue is the one glimmer of transparency they had - makes one think more changes besides just replay need to come to this organization. Such drastic changes would be, as the slogan at left says, for the good of the game.

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