FIFA’s official analysis of the World Cup seemed incomplete to most viewers that had actually watched the event this summer. The document highlighting the summer’s tournament seemed to overlook many of the mistakes made by the officials and several of the referee blunders left multiple teams prematurely removed from the Cup this summer. But nowhere in the detailed statement was even the suggestion that the poor officiating alone marred the event and needed to be corrected immediately.
But FIFA was quick to praise Spain for winning the title and claimed that the side might be the best team of the century. Of course in 2010 there is still a lot of time for La Furia Roja to be outdone, but their “fantastic, highly attractive football” was the highlight of the Cup according to the official analysis. “Xavi, Iniesta and Xabi Alonso in midfield cover huge amounts of ground but play fabulous football too — it looks pretty and even playful, but it’s actually very hard work indeed” claimed the released document.
As for the final the only negative statement made was that the match was “littered with fouls, mainly by the Dutch”. There was no mention of the Nigel de Jong’s kung-fu kick to the chest missed call in the match or the fact that there were a record number of yellow cards handed out, but simply that there were many fouls all together. But then again Frank Lampard’s no goal call was merely described as the Three Lions “thought they had equalized but the goal was not given.” They “thought” they had, why not just admit that they had beyond any doubt and were ripped off? As for Mexico there description regarding the blatantly offside goal scored by Argentina in the initial knockout round of the playoffs, the mistake was described with even less pity claiming that they “were somewhat unfortunate to fall behind”. “Somewhat unfortunate”? Why not just admit that they were completely robbed by a terrible call? And of course the Slovenia-USA officiating blunder was not even mentioned at all in the document.
In fact no officiating mistake was completely apologized for at all, as I previously stated, and it seemed as if FIFA had a fascinating linguistic way of explaining the horrific called matches. Also the jubalani ball received little criticism from the organization that installed it claiming that it did possess “incredible speed”, but the analysis seemed to blame the poor keeping rather than the shifty object. FIFA claimed that the goalkeepers were “not consistent” and suggested that several of the bizarre goals were scored due to the keeper playing out of position.
FIFA did admit that several “errors” were made this summer, but claimed that the errors were “neither covered up nor justified but are meticulously analyzed to learn from them and improve future training plans”. Perhaps the most comical thing coming from the analysis was that FIFA rated 142 of the 145 goals scored were called correctly making no true apologies for any of the goals that should not have counted or any of the goals scored that in fact did not end up counting.
