Graham Kelly: Referee selection process should be above Fifa's murky politics

That the World Cup has for the most part illustrated football at its most open and astonishingly unpredictable owes much to the frustrations felt by many after the often sterile and cynical Italia 90. Sepp Blatter, then general secretary of Fifa, the game's world governing body, set up an ad hoc group outside the mainstream Fifa committees to examine the twin problems of low goal scoring and negative play.

The body was chaired by Blatter's subsequent rival for the Fifa presidency, Lennart Johansson. When I submitted a letter suggesting the adoption of three points for a win in the group stages, I was immediately co-opted.

The juiciest argument by far was that between the Danish referee Peter Mikkelsen and the French legend Michel Platini, who advocated banishing the tackle from the game on the grounds that referees had no idea how to distinguish between a fair and a foul challenge.

After his committee faded from the scene, Blatter continued to put forward what he felt were reforming changes, obscured at times by strange notions such as his proposal to replace the throw-in with a kick. When he turned his attention to a campaign to ban the tackle from behind, after the Dutch striker Marco van Basten was put out of the game through injury, he was on safer ground, though traditionalists in the British game wanted to retain the sliding challenge.

The 64 matches at this high-profile World Cup will set the standard for how matches are controlled throughout the world in the future. In England alone there will be about 10,000 major professional matches before the next World Cup kicks off in Germany in 2006.

The most striking difference between World Cup 2002 and those of 1998 and 1994, despite the high number of disciplinary cards this time, is the encouragement referees have been given to allow the matches to flow. Fingertip control, or shrewd assessment of the temperature of the match, was to be the key. Of course, the application of the advantage clause can lead to inconsistency from one match to another and requires the players to reciprocate by getting on with the game in the correct spirit.

Whether fingertip control could have been expected of the strict Spaniard Antonio Lopez Nieto, who showed 16 yellow cards and two reds – all technically justifiable – during Germany against Cameroon, is doubtful.

I was beginning to despair that referees would ever crack down on shirt-pulling, until Anders Frisk gave the late penalty for Ireland against Spain and Byron Moreno awarded the South Koreans their early penalty against Italy.

Going into the tournament, Fifa made great play of the fact that simulation – diving or cheating – would be penalised, and therefore it is a great pity that it could not back up its rhetoric with more than a derisory £5,000 fine for Rivaldo for the play-acting that led to Hakan Unsal's dismissal in the Brazil against Turkey group game. He probably had jewellery worth more round his neck at the time.

We really should expect better, when Rivaldo's writhing is witnessed by the Fifa executive committee, including Brazilian Football Confederation president Ricardo Teixeira, in their official uniforms.

That Rivaldo should freely admit his culpability and Roberto Carlos should claim to have simulated many fouls demonstrated how deep the culture of cheating has permeated. In the Brazilians' next match, against China, Ronaldinho was substituted at half-time, after receiving a yellow card from Mr Frisk for diving in the penalty area.

It would be good to think that a clear warning might be issued that any blatant cheating would in future be punished by a meaningful sanction such as the deduction of a point.

The other major disappointment has been the number of offside errors. Assistant referees unable to comprehend the art of fine timing have disallowed too many legitimate and, in the case of Italy, crucial, goals.

Encroachment at set pieces has still not been eradicated. Even Pierluigi Collina, whose considerable reputation enables him to sell the most potentially explosive decisions without difficulty, has been caught out in this respect. Moreover, Argentina secured a draw against Sweden by virtue of an outrageous piece of cheating by Hernan Crespo, who ran into the penalty area alongside the penalty taker, Ariel Ortega, and was therefore on hand to convert the rebound from Magnus Hedman's parry.

Dealing with encroachment and the adjudication of offsides would be much improved if Blatter's pledge to select the best referees irrespective of nationality were to be honoured at future World Cups. But, after his placatory words towards the Italians, which included unprecedented public criticism of Moreno for sending off Francesco Totti, I very much fear that refereeing issues are about to descend into the murky morass of Fifa politics.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com