The officials did not punish Bosingwa and, under FIFA law, the FA are prohibited from taking disciplinary action when incidents are seen at the time by the match officials.
It is very disappointing.
The problem in the Boswinga scenario is that Riley
didn't see the kick (which in itself is astonishing) but the linesman
did. How the Referee's Assistant/Linesman, having seen it right in front of him, could consider the kick anything other than serious foul play is beyond me.
Obviously the RA/Linesman's distance was not an issue. What was almost certainly an issue is that RA/linesmen prefer to be left to their job of marshalling the line: being
Linesmen and not
Referre's Assistant's. It's bad enough keeping track of all the offsides in the super-fast Premier League without having to do Mike Riley's job for him, might be the thinking.
And so you have the worst of both worlds: in the past, if this had happened the referee could simply report that he had seen nothing. This would give the FA the green light to pursue retrospective punishment of the kind SWP is about to face.
But FIFA rules (which are probably spot on) are that the FA cannot undermine the officials decisions on the night (well, until it suits them) and since the Assistant called it as fine, the FA is stuck with it.
FIFA need to act fast to ensure that linesman are left with the job that they used to have - getting on with being linesmen. Leave the referreeing to the ref, and if he misses it, serious foul play can still be rectified afterwards with three game bans and the questions can be asked of the man in the middle as to why he didn't see it.
This takes this responsibility away from the linesmen, who at the moment are asked to referee the game as well as the man in the middle (and potentially conflict the 'superior' official in doing so) whilst doing their job of marshalling the line and making as good calls as possible on contentious offsides.
That said, why he didn't wave that flag as soon as Boswinga's foot went up really is beyond me. It's clearly a big, bad miss and I don't think that linesman will be officiating at the top levels any time soon.
deelang
.