Sepp Blatter says we need to take a long and hard look at World Cup Qualifying…now you tell us!

Apparently, the Irish (after being screwed by the officials in their loss to France in their final qualifying match) asked to be the 33rd team in a 32 team World Cup tournament as penance for the awful missed call that was mishandled by the refs and FIFA officials in attendance.

Well, Blatter denied that request (and rightfully so, they should have just replayed the match, but if he just put them in there would a worldwide revolt against FIFA and rioting in the streets because every team who had even a remote gripe about something that happened in qualifying would come out of the woodwork and ask for “special treatment”.  Yeah, that wouldn’t work OR help.

Now he says that because there’s so much at stake the qualifying process needs to be looked at strongly.  I’m not sure that now is the best time to come out and say “we’ll fix it” after you just screwed over a whole country on a penalty from their opponent in which the offending player admitted the penalty and was actually quite sorry about the whole thing.

He’s also talking about having additional officials at World Cup matches and whether that’s feasible or doable and I say “Get some instant replay and some rules for instant replay.”  All goals are reviewed.  All penalties in the box are reviewed and all hard penalties are reviewed to make sure people are being yellow and red carded correctly.  Done deal.  A Soccer match already takes long enough…what’s a couple more minutes of stoppage time to get it right on the field at the the right time instead of realizing afterwards you screwed the pooch and now you can’t fix it?

You should’ve thought of that to begin with Herr Blatter.