To see, or not to see - that is the question

Arsenal 3 Celtic 1 (5-1 on aggregate)

Arsenal cruised into this afternoon’s draw for the Champions League without ever really needing to get out of second gear, courtesy of goals from Eduardo (a penalty), Eboue and Arshavin, but all anyone seems to want to talk about are the events leading up to the penalty.

Before I go any further, let me say this: yes, it was a dive. From the replays, it is possible that Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc may have clipped Eduardo, but any contact was purely incidental and the Croatian striker was clearly on his way down already, hoping to win a penalty. And I’m certainly not proud that one of our players won a penalty by what appears to be deliberate gamesmanship.

It’s not even an excuse to claim that this is just tit-for-tat because we conceded a critical penalty under similar circumstances late on in a Champions League quarter-final two seasons ago (courtesy of Liverpool’s Ryan Babel).

It was wrong, plain and simple. Deep down, I think most true fans would prefer not to score goals this way. Certainly, I do.

However, I’m a little perplexed by the reaction – some might say over-reaction – from certain quarters over the past 24 hours. Scottish FA chief executive Gordon Smith has called for UEFA to ban Eduardo, as has Celtic midfielder Massimo Donati. And I noticed several people on Twitter during and after the game last night expressing the fervent wish for Eduardo to break his leg again as punishment for his actions. (I mean, honestly, you’d think he had tried to deliberately hurt an opponent with a vengeful, premeditated stamp. Not that any professional would ever do that, would they?)

Apparently UEFA have the authority to retrospectively review the incident and, if deemed appropriate, hand down a two-match ban for simulation. Fair enough, although to me that seems a bit excessive given that, if the referee had seen fit at the time to penalise Eduardo for simulation, he would have received a straight yellow card, nothing more.

While I am in no way attempting to mitigate Eduardo’s actions, what’s with this sudden witch-hunting bandwagon? The penalty didn’t materially affect the outcome of the tie, as Celtic manager Tony Mowbray freely admitted after the game. Why single out Eduardo when defenders regularly foul opponents who would otherwise be clean through with a shot on goal (as happened on at least one occasion last night), or who target a team’s star player by kicking lumps out of him at every possibly opportunity (as Celtic players did to Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas in last week’s first leg)? And from the outrage that some clearly feel towards Eduardo, you would think that he was the only player ever who had dived to try and win a penalty. (Ahem, Cristiano Ronaldo, Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen …) When Owen ‘finds a leg to fall over’, as one common euphemism puts it, as he did against Argentina in the 2002 World Cup, he is hailed for his cunning centre forward play. When Eduardo does it, he needs to be hung, drawn and quartered, apparently, or at the very least horribly injured.

Double standards, anyone?

Anyhow, I don’t really want to get into a debate about what an appropriate punishment is for last night’s events, particularly not with the kind of people who think that a proportionate response is to declare thermonuclear war on someone who has cut them up at a roundabout.

UEFA president Michel Platini has reiterated his desire to position additional assistant referees behind the goal to help combat diving. And while I personally don’t believe that’s the answer, there is certainly a need for match officials to receive help in making critical decisions.

Here’s what I would do. Rather than put extra officials on the field, I would employ technology to do the following three things:

Use Hawk-Eye (or a similar system) to determine whether a ball has or has not crossed the goal-line, a system which has been reliably proven for years in tennis.

For critical incidents only – by which I mean determining whether 'goals' are offside, or questionable penalty claims, or other incidents which may result in a player being sent off – allow play to continue where appropriate, and then use video replay to determine what actually happened. Similar processes are in place in the NFL, rugby and cricket, all of which work well. Managers could even be issued with a certain number of ‘challenges’ per match (as they do in the NFL), which they can use whenever they feel a key decision has gone against them. If replays can conclusively demonstrate within, say, 60 seconds, that the call on the field was incorrect, then the decision is reversed.

For all other incidents, a video review board should sit after every round of matches (as happens in rugby) to examine any contentious or unseen incidents, with the power to issue retrospective yellow or red cards accordingly - such punishments would be consistent with what a referee would have given on the pitch.

The aim here would be to provide support to (not undermine) the officials to ensure key decisions are made correctly, but without causing huge disruption to what is, and should always be, a flowing, fast-paced game. To me, stopping play briefly once or twice a game to ensure justice is done seems like a fair trade-off. After all, we generally see at least a couple of injury stoppages a game already anyway, whereas in rugby play would continue while an injured player is receiving on-field treatment.

So there you have it. Under my proposed system, last night we would have had an overturned penalty decision, a yellow card for Eduardo, and a ‘fair’ result overall - which would still have been an Arsenal win anyway.

Of course, I don’t expect anything like that to happen any time soon. After all, nothing I’ve proposed is particularly new or left-field, and nothing has been introduced yet.

And what would we have to argue about in the pub if referees always made the right decision, eh?