FIFA Makes Baffling International Joke by Praising World Cup Officials

Head official Jose Maria Garcia-Aranda offered shocking praise for this year's World Cup officiating crews in a scheduled press conference on Saturday. He then acknowledged that some mistakes were made.

In order to back up his point, he used the flawed argument that FIFA officials, based on reviews, had gotten 96 percent of calls correct over the course of the first 62 matches, according to an Associated Press report.

While Garcia-Aranda did not attempt to hide that FIFA had made mistakes, initial reaction from the sport's fans to his claims has been extremely negative.

One of Garcia-Aranda's biggest oversights is the scope of the calls that FIFA officials made incorrectly. While making a correct call on a throw-in does matter, it isn't as important as a goal-scoring decision. Comparing the two side by side, in the manner that he did, only serves to skew the accuracy of statistical data.

That allowed Jose Maria Garcia-Aranda to make his outlandish statement of praise for this Cup's officials.

As the old saying goes, statistics never lie , but liars use statistics .

When examining FIFA's record on critical, goal-deciding calls, the record from this World Cup was far below his reported 96 percent, and for any sporting event at any level of play that is simply unacceptable.

So how could it be acceptable on the highest stage of the most popular sport in the world?

While it does seem that bad calls were being made by repeat offenders who FIFA attempted to deal with, multiple games in the tournament were decided by officials making questionable calls.

Just ask Mexico or England how that feels. At least Koman Coulibaly got off the hook because the United States still won its group on a miracle goal by Landon Donovan.

This is a time when FIFA should be seriously considering instituting video replay for goal decisions, in order to involve further embarrassment. Instead, it has chosen to praise itself when looking in the mirror at its mistakes.

For the sport's international governing body to make such an arrogant public display is truly baffling.

There is no word yet on what steps will be taken by FIFA to ensure better officiating and better results in the future. Perhaps they will begin to address their mistakes when they have finished patting themselves on the back.

In the meantime, we can only hope the officials don't make any bogus calls in the World Cup final.

Perhaps they should look into hiring Paul the Octopus, who can't seem to make a wrong call on the tournament.