“When we see the images, there is indeed a hand contact, admittedly, but involuntary, therefore we should not have whistled for this foul and the penalty was not necessary,” said Mr. Cailleux, referee of the Lyon-Nice match. He could only acknowledge the damage after reviewing the footage that led to the penalty giving Lyon the victory… in the 94th minute of play. “This is unacceptable. We are going to explore all legal remedies, in civil courts if necessary. We cannot just stand by without saying anything,” retorted Maurice Cohen, newly elected to the Football League Board of Directors, who intends to make his voice heard to ensure that such things do not happen again on the various French playing fields.
The debate is not new, but there are sometimes matches that clearly show that new technologies could be a real solution to the logical human error of a central referee and his two assistants. Yet, even UEFA President Michel Platini, who has somewhat revised his stance is now fiercely against video refereeing despite being sympathetic to the addition of two referees, says, “Football would lose its freshness if assisted by video for refereeing.” Perhaps its freshness, but it would certainly gain in sporting honesty and transparency for millions of football enthusiasts. Naturally, the Lyon-Nice match would have had a different outcome, but other Lyon-Nice matches are coming up in the next weeks of the championship, Champions League, and other national and international competitions. Has video technology distorted rugby? Certainly not, the oval has even adapted well to this new refereeing technology and the “rare” disputes over controversial tries are now a thing of the past on the field. Would it be a sin to review an offside flagged by at least one of the referees or to recheck whether a ball crossed the goal line?
This Lyon-Nice has already [made headlines](https://news.google.fr/news?q=nice%20lyon&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:fr:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn) and it will continue to do so until more mistakes occur in other stadiums, and cameras or other assistant referees will remain, for now, just projects.
