The standard video technology debate in football tends to follow a similar trajectory. Football “purists” believe it will slow the game down with constant stoppages, remove the element of fan debate popular in the endlessly churning soup that is the soccer blogosphere, and prove useless in situations when the call is entirely subjective, such as a foul in the area that leads to a penalty.

Proponents like myself and Dunlop argue that leagues could easily introduce measures to prevent its abuse and overuse (such as a one per game rule, with an automatic red card if the decision is not reversed), that referee mistakes which cost teams millions of dollars aren’t worth it to preserve pub debates, and that video tech should never be used in the case of fouls.

However there’s another angle though that’s rarely discussed in this debate: the devastating effect incorrect decisions have on the referees who inevitably make them.  Last week, Bundesliga referee Babak Rafati attempted suicide on the eve of Cologne’s game against Mainz 05, which he was to preside over. While we can’t know Rafati’s personal life well enough to speculate on the cause of his depression, there is some evidence the pressures of his job were a factor. Dr Sven Menke, Rafati’s solicitor, said this to Germany’s Bild newspaper:

“Mr Rafati felt a growing pressure to perform combined with the media pressure together with the constant fear of making mistakes, and this was leading to an ever-increasing burden. This burden was even making daily routine problems seem insurmountable and he no longer felt able to cope.”

Referees are among the most widely-hated and lowest-paid workers in the multi-billion dollar European football machine. Despite the significant investment in training over the last few years, it’s clear referees are still liable to make major errors in the context of a match, as I wrote earlier this week.

While conservative football fans worry that video tech will irrevocably change the game, football has suffered far more dramatic changes over the last two or three decades care of television’s incursion on the football pitch. It’s unfortunate, but with the advent of lucrative television rights contracts finishing fifth and not fourth can mean the loss of millions of pounds of revenue. Relegation can put poorly-managed clubs on the path to bankruptcy. It’s not ideal, but with the financial stakes at an all-time high the pressure of referees to be perfect is greater than ever.

Television has also introduced a wide array of camera angles which in most cases instantly alert millions of fans around the world to a referee’s mistake. Meanwhile the the only person whose decision actually matters is also absurdly the person unable to view these angles after the fact in order to help make a decision. He (and increasingly she) is still expected to make a call based on what he sees in a split-second of real time.

No doubt the referee’s own equipment—a pair of eyes, a judgment centre of the brain, and his short-term memory—are miraculous wonders of biological engineering millions of years in the evolutionary making. But they are far from perfect because they did not evolve for perfection. We evolved to eat and avoid being eaten, not to recall a split-second event with pin-point clarity after the fact.

Not only that, but they must also compete against players trained to get away with as much as they can in the context of a match, and to never admit to seeing the ball cross over the line, for example. Even the world’s best referees cannot possibly match the type of standard we expect of them.

And so we get a situation like Babak Rafati’s. I’ve known countless footballer wannabes but not one person with the ambition to be a referee. It’s the dirtiest of dirty jobs, which must be performed to an impossibly high standard all while listening to threats and insults from tens of thousands of people, including players and managers, throughout the course of ninety minutes. To not allow them a tool which could drastically reduce human error and hopefully reduce the amount of abuse they receive from all sides in this context seems cruel.