(An Imaginary Scenario Written After Roma Lost The Semi-Final Of The 2018 Champions League Because Of Two Unawarded Penalties)
It didn’t happen and it can’t happen because the speed of champions league football won’t let it happen, footballers aren’t Don Quixotes, and solidarity doesn’t grow around 90 minutes of outrage but let’s suppose that Totti had it all on his mobile, he stood up after the second penalty-foul wasn’t given, and whistled to his mates, and they all walked off while he held his i-phone and his immaculate technology in his hand, telling the world the referees had got it wrong. There would be an immediate meeting, the officials would be suspended, and the match would be given to Roma!
In reality, were such a scenario to unfold, Roma would be berated, Totti gutted and the world aghast at the temerity of revolutionary action on the football field. FIFA would sentence A.S. Roma to jail-time and Totti would be executed.
And that’s why football isn’t fair, and bad luck, temperament, and rules conspire to hammer the living daylights out of the thoughts I’m voicing here! Furthermore, rejecting high-tech technology, immaculate technology, which can replay incidents immediately, as happens, for example, at Wimbledon every summer, the official world of football leaves room for human error.....and that’s exactly what FIFA and champion- league football want. That narrow margin of error can be engineered to let certain teams win, perhaps not in the final but in everything else leading up to it.
