Reflections : Please No More Conspiracy Theories

What is football coming to? What do we mainly end up discussing after most matches? How unlucky one of the teams were? How bad the referee and linesmen were? How many wrong decisions were given?

Firstly a human being no matter how competent cannot give correct decisions in a split second since he is not a TV camera. Secondly it is true that much more could have been done to improve the standard of officiating but for whatever reasons that has not happened. It's also true that some of the officials in charge of some of the biggest matches are simply not good enough to officiate them.

By now most of the football fans and pundits are of the view that technology must be introduced into the game so as to decrease the number of controversies. Unfortunately their plea falls to deaf years as Sepp Blatter and his team steadfastly refuse to listen.

So in such circumstances what do we end up with? More and more controversies. However that's not all. If controversies were where it ends then it wouldn't be so bad. What's much worse are the millions of conspiracy theories that are floated around? And while players say their bit once in a while the main people using such situations to their advantage are football coaches and journalists who just love to come up with one more conspiracy theory whenever they feel that their team is hard done by and choose not to notice when their team is the beneficiary of wrong decisions.

Let's look at some of the conspiracy theories floated in recent times. The case of Ireland where they were knocked out of qualification for WC 2010 due to a hand ball goal immediately comes to mind. To be honest no matter how much noise that matter made credit must be given to the Irish for not saying anything out of turn. They said that seedings before the playoffs were unfair. For those problems there is only one entity responsible and that is Fifa and Mr. Sepp Blatter. They were so careless as to not even mention in the rules that the world cup playoffs would be seeded and they invented the system for the draw for the group stage of the world cup after all the qualifying countries had been decided. Seriously if they think they can get away with even this latter act they must be presuming themselves to be pseudo dictators because any accountable person(s) in any field of work would have been ripped apart for committing a monstrosity like that. Coming back to the Irish they had a right to use the word unfair. And they never said that the hand ball decision against them was deliberate.

However most other "victims" show no such class as the Irish showed. In England the common cry sometimes heard is that Uefa President Michel Platini is French and so he naturally hates the English. No wonder English clubs are suffering so much. Even if Platini imposes economic measures to make the competition fairer it is only seen as exploitative by the bigwigs. Steps such as trying to get clubs from the so called lesser leagues to participate more effectively in UCL are not even recognized as worthy efforts.

In Italy on the other hand the standard line is we don't have enough political clout in the Uefa and so naturally we would be given less value. Why is it so easy to forget that not so long ago Serie A ruled UCL and surely clubs from other countries would have also had their complaints against decisions given in those days? So does that mean we should now conclude that Italian clubs did well in those days because they had political clout at that time and not because they had very fine teams with very fine players? So what happened? Why did they lose this "political clout"? The brutal truth which very few want to accept is that the margin between winning and losing at these levels is very fine but the results when evaluated as a whole over a reasonable period of time tend to even out in terms of luck. Looking at those results indicates that Serie A today is not on par with EPL or La Liga. Instead of trying to correct what's going wrong let's float one more conspiracy theory has become the deeply regrettable attitude of most concerned.

While on Italy just look at this irony for instance. Inter's very well known coach Jose Mourinho is continuously trying to hint in the media sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly that the Italian FA have something against Inter and want to bring them down. Rewind to 2007-08. At the end of the title race the comments coming out from the Roma camp were that the referees won the Scudetto for Inter. So does that mean whoever wins does so because of the referees?

England and Italy are by no means the only ones. It took just a couple of decisions to go in Barcelona's favor for the notoriously biased Madrid press to go so far as to suggest that La Liga is being manipulated in favor of the Catalans. So now that a few decisions have gone against the reigning champions, perhaps it's time for the pro-Barcelona dailies to return the favor.

And how about international football. Well Brazilians can go to a world cup such as WC 2006 more intent on having a ball than playing the ball but when they are knocked out it doesn't stop their supporters from coming up with all kinds of theories about how Brazil is being brought down to help European countries. Of course winning the world cup is Brazil's birth right and how can we deny them that.

Please don't for a moment think that we are singling out the Brazilians here. Germany, who in the past have been accused of being lucky beneficiaries of controversial decisions, had the gall to claim through their outspoken goal keeper Jens Lehmann after the Euro 2008 final how certain decisions had gone against them when the whole world had witnessed them being annihilated on the pitch by a vastly superior Spanish team.

And we must give an honorable mention to Portugal without whom this discussion just cannot be rounded off. Portugal in WC 2006 showed that it isn't wrong to break a few jaws and legs of opponents if it can help you progress in the world cup but once they were knocked out they were back with their favorite line - we are a small nation whom no one wants to see win major trophies.

The intent here is not to criticize individual club or national teams. It's merely to indicate how sorry a state of affairs this is. And with Fifa completely ruling out technology what are we in store for at WC 2010? More wrong refereeing decisions, more controversies and worst of all more such conspiracy theories.

It's understandable to feel bitter after a match which a team feels they deserved to win. Accusing the referee and pointing out specific incidents is also acceptable. However when conspiracy theories start floating it just gets a bit too murky because there is no end to them with accusations which would invariably in the recent future be followed by counter accusations. The only time an accusation of bias should be morally permissible is when you can talk purely in terms of facts such as with Ireland saying that Fifa had no right to seed teams before the playoffs began if they had not written that in the rules earlier.

As a fan and admirer of the beautiful game, if while watching a major club or international match, one is not firmly of the belief that what will happen the next minute is not known to anyone in the entire world and only time will tell the result of this encounter, then what's the point in watching football? If this game of conspiracy theories continues then eventually someone like this writer will have to give up football. You go to the beautiful game to add beautiful moments in your life but if all around it there is so much dirt then what's the point in staining your apparel?