Tale of faulty umpiring

Football is a game of heart – with a few bad decisions, the tempo of the game is lost. Refereeing, or umpiring, though a valuable job is quite thankless. Referees in football and umpires in cricket are supposed to be neutral and well-trained to pick out minute details with their naked eye. Yet, like any normal human, the referees do make errors and while some of them do not affect the game much, others change the face of the game.

Very recently, in the second leg of the Copa del Rey semi-final between Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, due to some controversial refereeing decisions, the game had a different outcome – many allege so.

Atletico Madrid was twice flagged offside, once in a goal scoring spot and other for the Griezmann goal. In the 59th minute of the match, Griezmann beautifully kept himself onside and found the back of the net after the ball was released to him but to his utter dismay, the goal was disallowed with an offside call. Atletico was relentlessly attacking Barca since the beginning of the match and the decision dented the spirit of their game.

In the same match, a controversial penalty was awarded to Atletico Madrid in the 79th minute for Pique's foul on Gameiro. The replays clearly showed Pique getting to the ball first, making it a bizarre penalty call.

The football and cricket worlds are full of such weird refereeing calls. Here's a look at some of them.

Maradona's 'Hand of God': Diego Maradona scored one of the most controversial World Cup goals against England in the 1986 World Cup where Maradona used his hand to punch the ball into the net and yet somehow, the goal was counted.

Lampard's strike in 2010: Frank Lampard struck a stunner against Germany in the 2010 World Cup but despite the ball clearly crossing the line, the goal was denied by the referee.

Lawson's hit-wicket: In 1984, Australia's Geoff Lawson clearly hit his stumps twice against West Indies but somehow, he still stood on the crease as the umpires didn't deem him out. Flintoff's caught behind: Australia's Andrew Flintoff was given out caught behind against New Zealand in 2002 while the replays clearly showed that his bat was not even close to the ball.

Such decisions have led to the introduction of video referrals which help both the referees/umpires and the players. Umpires, now-a-days, almost always leave the run-out decisions to the third umpire.

On top of that, the Decision Review System (DRS), a technology-based system, was first introduced in cricket in the 2008-09 season and with more detailing and improvements over the year, the system was recently used in India vs England series (in India) and the ongoing India vs Bangladesh one-off Test (in India).

Just like cricket, the goal-line technology was introduced in football from the 2014 World Cup after the controversially disallowed Lampard goal in 2010 World Cup. The technology judges if the ball had crossed the goal-line or not. Because of the expense of the technology, it is used only on the high-level as of now.

Due to recent controversial judgements by referees, there are talks going on that the Spanish League, La Liga, will introduce video referrals from next season. Refereeing decisions can make or break a game, and technological help to the referees/umpires seems legit. After all, to err is human.