I’m not going to talk about poor refereeing. I’m here to talk about the poor referees who’ve been turned into scapegoats by that ancient fellowship known as FIFA during this World Cup.

Referees Jorge Larrionda and Roberto Rosetti, the officials who took charge of the England vs Germany and Argentina vs Mexico games, respectively, have been sent home in shame by football’s world governing body.

After Larrionda and his linesmen failed to conclusively determine that England’s Frank Lampard’s first half effort had crossed the line, and Rosetti ruled Argentina’s Carlos Tevez’s goal as onside on the advice of the linesman, FIFA released a statement saying that the two referees would take no further part in the tournament.

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s the biggest cop-out I’ve ever heard of in football.

First, FIFA denies Larrionda and Rosetti the use of technology to perform their already thankless and sometimes seemingly impossible tasks, but when they make an error, FIFA flogs them in public to wash their hands clean.

Mexico players asked Rosetti to look at the replay of Carlos Tevez's offside goal on the stadium's giant screen, but Rosetti is not allowed by FIFA based his decisions on that.

It’s like asking Martin Scorcese to make a movie and forcing him to cast Paris Hilton as the lead, then sueing him when the film fails to win an Oscar.

Okay, so maybe the referees’ mistakes were pretty glaring, but still, FIFA should know better than to announce that the pair were being sent home.

At the moment, it looks like FIFA are just castigating two innocent individuals to draw attention away from their own stubborn refusal to consider putting video technology into the game.

Not only would announcing their departure from the tournament show that FIFA were taking those errors seriously, it also makes it seem like the referees were completely to blame – killing two refs with one stone.

But when you consider what that old goat Sepp Blatter has been bleating on about in the last few years about technology, then you feel it’s more than just a cop-out – it’s hypocrisy.

Blatter: "I'm not too fond of this microphone technology either, but I'll use it for the next 15mins so you can hear me babble..."

Blatter had argued that football should always have that aspect of “human error”, I guesss because that’s what gives football a certain charm to silly old sentimentalists like him.

“Let it be as it is and let’s leave football with errors,” he said in 2008 when talking about introducing video technology to the game. Now it seems the only errors in football come from him.

Anyway, if football is about human error, then why send the two referees home? Why not commend them for adding to the human drama that he so craves for in football? Heck, why not stick them into an Ultimate Fighter cage with Fabio Capello and Javier Aguirre and see what happens?

The New York Post had already made their feelings known with the headline “This Sport Is Stupid Anyway” after team USA were knocked out, having survived a disallowed goal earlier against Slovenia – something that would’ve easily been solved with a video replay that wouldn’t have taken two minutes.

Larrionda: The referee who did not give Frank Lampard's goal against Germany.

Whatever FIFA’s reasons are for refusing technology – it delays the game, there are financial restrictions, Blatter’s sadistic addiction to watching referees getting crucified, etc – they are growing weaker with each passing tournament.

I don’t know why Blatter thinks it will delay the game. Maybe he’s so ancient he thinks the officials will have to rewind a VCR over and over again before they find the right shot.

The inventor of the Hawk-eye technology used in tennis and cricket has already said that their system could instantly send a beep into the referee’s earpiece (which they already wear, sanctioned by FIFA) if a ball crosses the line.

And in terms of financial restrictions, why doesn’t FIFA just make video technology available only to top-level tournaments like the World Cup? It’s not like we’re asking them to put Hawk-eye into our Sunday Leagues; though they probably could if they wanted to since FIFA earns millions of dollars every tournament in sponsorship deals. Besides, FIFA had earlier announced that the World Cup in South Africa had pushed their revenues past the billion-dollar mark.

The sad thing is that at the end of the day, the referees are the ones who have to suffer. They’re the ones getting the death threats, they’re the ones whose “mistakes” their families will have to read about in the papers. The way it looks at the moment, they’re also the ones that FIFA will hang out to dry whenever they need to cover their over-sized butts over the whole technology thing.

So I guess the New York Post was right. As much as it pains me to say this, football is stupid sometimes.