Paul Lewis: This donkey's really stupid

It will be about a week, I'm picking, maybe less. That will be about how long it takes before the first big injustice of the 2010 Fifa World Cup occurs and Sepp Blatter is forced, once again, to defend his ludicrous insistence on not introducing technology to football.

Blatter, the 74-year-old head of Fifa, is football's most powerful man and appears to be the only person in authority who cannot see the value of introducing technology into the world's most popular game.

Oh, I forgot Michel Platini, the once inordinately gifted French playmaker who is now head of Uefa and who plays Riff Raff to Blatter's Frank 'N Furter on this issue.

These two geniuses are among those who ensured that there would be no changes to international football ahead of this World Cup. This is the tournament, remember, where France advanced to the finals ahead of Ireland after French striker Thierry Henry got away with a blatant handball, missed by the referee, which led to the winning goal.

There was a global outcry and condemnation of the French but Blatter and Fifa stood firm. No replay, no adding of Ireland to the tournament and no restriction of Henry in South Africa because of his part in a "refereeing mistake".

So a team which did not deserve to qualify did; the Irish have since beaten everyone in sight and France is everyone's fond hope to be ousted early.

It is football's only weakness. The conscious decision to allow the 'beautiful game' to produce rogue results; where cheats actually do prosper; where play-acting is rewarded; is its Achilles Heel.

It actually teaches kids that cheating is condoned. That's about as beautiful as dysentery.

What is wrong with technology that ensures the right result is reached? Why not use technology to catch out the cheats - and then punish them so their side is disadvantaged as opposed to rewarded?

That cheating still has pride of place in football was illustrated most recently in New Zealand's friendly international against Slovenia last week.

The Slovenian forward, Milivoje Novakovic, had a hand lightly laid on him by defender Winston Reid but reacted like he'd been Tasered. He went down and writhed on the ground like he was about to produce triplets. Then he got up and curved the free kick home.

This Greek tragedy nonsense is also a blight on football. All right, laying a hand on an opponent's shirt is technically an offence which can draw a free kick. Reid was a bit naive and it was a good lesson to learn ahead of the finals.

But the fact remains - that 'offence' was laughable, did not hinder the attacker, and was not worth stopping the game for. The ref was conned, pure and simple. The price? A goal.

Blatter's objection to using technology is that it will delay the game too much and that goal-line technology isn't always reliable.

So who needs it? The camera work covering top football games is excellent. Slow motion video replays are used all the time by the broadcasters and regularly pick up errors.

Why not just deal the ref and maybe a video ref into the picture, just as league and rugby do? Couldn't be simpler.

If there is a goal-line debate, use the replays. If that is still inconclusive, the decision reverts to the ref. How hard is this? It's not brain surgery.

If the refs are able to ask for help (all right, maybe it's regulated to only a rare few times per game), they might be able to discern whether a penalty was justified or not; whether a player is diving; whether any contact was made.

It's the game's one nasty, suppurating carbuncle still - that a match can be manipulated into a wrong result because of cheating and because football does not have the mechanism to right the wrong.

When this is pointed out to Blatter, his reaction has been specious. He feels that introducing technology in football would spoil the "passion and emotion" felt for the sport. Blatter insists the sport should retain its human element and that bringing in technology would prevent spectators from having their own opinions on the game.

"When you are in a football match there is no social level, everybody is the same and everybody in the stadium and at their television is an expert," says Blatter.

"Everybody is an expert and that is why we are not going into technology on the field of play, because ... then there are no more experts. Then the science is coming in the game, no discussions, we don't want that. We want to have these emotions, and then a little bit more than emotions, passion."

Can you believe it? You'd get more sense out of a cauliflower. What he's saying is that it's better for the game if people can argue and discuss such incidents - better than, oh I don't know, getting the right result.

I don't think Ireland agree with him. Nor does any side that has lost a game to a bad refereeing decision which could easily have been put right.

Earlier this year when Fiorentina were beaten 2-1 by Bayern Munich in a Champions League game influenced by several refereeing mistakes, Blatter promised to look at technology again.

"I woke up after a tranquil night where I hadn't even watched television, but when I read the morning papers I jerked as once again the referees made the news for wrong decisions," said Blatter at the time.

Quite apart from the rather horrible thought of Blatter "jerking", this admission that things were not as they should be was followed by action of the most curious sort - none.

Platini's solution is to employ two more referees. God help us. So we wait - for the first instance of World Cup cheating that will produce passion, yes, emotion, yes, but not justice nor fair play.

For some reason, contemplating these two, I was moved to remember Blackadder's sly riposte to the simpleton Prince George in Blackadder III.

George: "Someone said I had the wit and intellect of a donkey."

Blackadder: "Absurd, sir, unless it was a particularly stupid donkey."