Filed under: Uncategorized, World Cup tickets sold to U.S. | Tags: 125, 2007 Women's World Cup, 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup, 2010 World Cup, 2011 Women's World Cup, 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, 2014 FIFA World Cup, 2018 World Cup, 2022 World Cup, 465 tickets sold to U.S., ABC, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, CONCACAF, England, ESPN, FIFA, Fox, France, Germany, Ghana, Group "G", Group of Death, Italia '90, Italy, Manaus, Mexico, Natal, Portugal, Recife, Royal Bafokeng Stadium, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sunil Gulati, Telemundo, U.S. National Team, U.S. Soccer, U.S. Soccer Supporters Club, United States, Univision
With nearly four months remaining before kickoff, the United States has the highest number of allocated tickets among visiting countries for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
Though its odds of getting out of the so-called “Group of Death” and winning Brasil ’14 are a daunting 100-to-1, the United States, on every level, has become a significant part of the planet’s most-watched sporting event. That’s a far cry from the beginning of its World Cup run at Italia ’90, when a U.S. team of current and former college standouts needed a miracle to qualify for the first time in four decades, then crashed out in three games, supported by a smattering of American fans, many of whom were already in Italy on vacation and decided, on a whim, to have a look.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 2012 European Championship, 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, 2014 World Cup, Brazil, English Premier League, FIFA, FIFA Club World Championship, Frank Lampard, Germany, GoalRef, Hawk-Eye, International Football Association Board, Japan, Pandora's Box, UEFA Champions League, Ukraine, Zurich
Soccer’s rule-making body, the International Football Association Board, has approved the use of technology to confirm whether a ball has crossed the goal line inside the goal.
The technology will be introduced at the FIFA Club World Championship in Japan in December and will be in place for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and 2014 World Cup, both to be hosted by Brazil.
Also OK’d was the use of five-man officiating teams. That concept, which involves a goal-line judge on each end of the field, was tested during last season’s UEFA Champions League and the 2012 European Championship.
Two different technology systems–Hawk-Eye and GoalRef–were unanimously approved by the Board during its special meeting in Zurich.
According to FIFA, Hawk-Eye, a British system already in use in cricket and tennis, employs six to eight high-speed cameras set up at different angles at each end to calculate the exact position of the ball. The data is then transferred to video software. From this data, the system generates a 3D image of the ball’s trajectory. The officials are informed whether a goal has been scored within a second.
GoalRef, a Danish-German system, creates the radio equivalent of a light curtain. Low magnetic fields are produced around the goal, and as soon as the ball, fitted with a compact electronic device, fully crosses the line, a minor change in the magnetic field is detected, thus allowing the exact position of the ball to be established. If a goal has been scored, an alert is transmitted to the officials via a radio signal within a second, with a message displayed on their watches and by vibration.
The English Premier League, which is expected to employ one of the systems, estimates the cost at between $200,000 and $250,000 per stadium. [July 5]
Comment: There are two soccer worlds: one in which hidebound traditionalists live and one populated by progressives who welcome things like goal-line technology. The only common ground is that everyone wants the officials to get it right, especially because the final score is likely to be 2-1 rather than 115-98. No room for error.
It has been said that soccer already uses technology: the headphones that connect the referee, assistant referees and fourth official at major matches. But this latest move by the International Football Association Board doesn’t just crack open Pandora’s Box, it rips the lid off its hinges.
What the introduction of the Hawk-Eye and GoalRef systems does is give us hybrid officiating. In a sport played by humans and officiated by humans, one aspect has been turned over to machine–and why, in the pursuit of perfection, stop there?
The infamous not-allowed goal by Ukraine at Euro 2012 aside, the incident that created the biggest hue and cry for goal-line technology was the shot by England’s Frank Lampard in the 2010 World Cup round of 16 that was clearly in the goal to everyone looking on–except the referee and his linesman. Egregious and inexcusable and, for FIFA, embarrassing. It is highly questionable that the correct call–something Hawk-Eye and GoalRef would not have missed–would have changed what was ultimately a comfortable 4-1 victory for Germany over the English. But what of all the hundreds and thousands of calls and non-calls made during a 32-team, 64-game tournament that lasted more than 100 hours?
Get Lampard’s goal right, but what of the fouls that should have resulted in a yellow card, the yellow card that should have been a red, the red that shouldn’t have been anything at all, the dive in the box that went unpunished and, especially, all those offside calls. Why invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to get one kind of decision right when a game turns on so many other decisions that rest in the hands of the referee and his assistants?
So expand technology. It can be done. Go to Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats and read about some of the other gizmos at the ready, including the Belgian system that can detect offside through sensors embedded in the players’ shinguards. It’s all never-ending, and thanks to the International Football Association Board’s ruling in this case, it won’t be.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 2010 World Cup, 2011 Women's World Cup, 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, ABC, break duck, English Premier League, ESPN, Ian Darke, Major League Soccer, Martin Tyler, Sky Sports, South Africa
Ian Darke, part of ESPN/ABC’s all-British team of play-by-play announcers for its telecasts of the 2010 World Cup, has been signed by ESPN to be the network’s lead announcer through the 2014 World Cup.
Darke, who leaves Sky Sports for ESPN, will call English Premier League games, U.S. men’s and women’s national team matches, marquee Major League Soccer games, the 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany, the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil and Brasil ’14 itself. [September 24]
Comment: First, a personal disclaimer: The author worked for Darke during a couple of 1994 World Cup matches and found him to be a consummate professional and a very nice man: funny, quicker than you or me, beyond well-prepared, so comfortable calling a game he coulda done it from a lounge chair. Darke was the only Englishman working that tournament for ESPN/ABC, and he proved to be a refreshing change of pace from the stable of American announcers the network had lined up. And during the 2010 World Cup, with or without his memorable call of the dramatic U.S.-Algeria game, Darke out-announced (if there is such a word) the network’s lead play-by-play man, fellow Englishman Martin Tyler.
Nevertheless, appointing Dark as The Voice of ESPN Soccer for the next four years represents a step back in the development of the game here. No doubt, Darke did a fine job in South Africa, helping ESPN set ratings records, and ESPN (a for-profit operation, last we heard) is understandably sticking with the hot hand. But Darke’s assignments include not just English matches and international tournaments but MLS and U.S. men’s and women’s games. The move will only reinforce the opinion among those who are not soccer’s friends that this sport is, and always will be, foreign. For the country’s so-called Euro snobs, meanwhile, it bolsters the view that when it comes to announcing soccer, there’s the American way, the wrong way, the right way, and the British way.
And in the short term, it accelerates a trend in soccer announcing here that can be described as “Brit Creep.” Words and phrases like “fixture” and “cup tie” are worming their way into the vocabulary of Americans calling games and narrating highlights. Players don’t have “speed,” they have “pace”; even balls have “pace.” Players don’t “appear” or “play” in games, they “feature.” A player doesn’t score two goals, he scores a “brace.” It’s only a matter of time before a struggling MLS club finally scores a goal and some fellow at the mic, American born and bred, works the term “break duck” into his call.
