Toshimitsu Yoshida can be quite certain that his name is currently mud in Uzbekistan. I hasten to explain: On September 3, Yoshida, a Japanese referee, was in charge of a crucial World Cup qualifying playoff between Uzbekistan and Bahrain. The game, played in the Uzbekistan capital Tashkent, finished as a 1-0 victory for the home team.

But the Uzbeks were anything but delighted. They now had to travel to Bahrain for the return leg with only a slender one-goal lead. But above all, they raised the roof with protests about Yoshida’s performance. They had a point. In the 38th minute, Yoshida had awarded Uzbekistan a penalty kick. Server Djeparov stepped up and whacked the ball into the net, making it a 2-0 lead. But no. Yoshida had spotted a teammate of Djeparov’s encroaching into the penalty area before the kick was taken, a violation which, according to FIFA rules, results in the goal being disallowed and the kick retaken. Yoshida duly canceled the goal, but refused to allow a retake, and awarded Bahrain a free kick instead.

Total bewilderment in the Uzbekistan ranks. Alisher Nikimbaev from the Uzbekistan Football Federation was furious, speculating, “Maybe it is a Japanese league rule, or perhaps it is a new rule introduced by FIFA.”

It was neither. Yoshida had simply perpetrated a colossal error. Uzbekistan immediately dispatched an official complaint to FIFA, demanding that Bahrain should forfeit the game and that Uzbekistan should be declared 3-0 winners, the traditional soccer forfeit scoreline.

FIFA’s response came on September 5.The game would have to be replayed. All 90 minutes of it. More complaints from Uzbekistan.

“It is not fair to make us replay the whole game after winning 1-0 and being robbed of a successful penalty,” said UFF spokesman Sanjar Rizayev. “Since FIFA did not award us a 3-0 win as we demanded, we ask for the first leg to be replayed starting in the 38th minute with that penalty being retaken.”

No way. The full game will be replayed on October 8 in Tashkent, with the second leg in Bahrain four days later. FIFA’s decision to order a replay is very unusual. Its standard position is that “a referee’s factual decisions are irrevocable,” even if they are demonstrably wrong.

Without that unbending stance, it is felt that the sport would be swamped by an avalanche of protests from losing teams. Actually, the referee does have a few seconds to change his mind – but once he has restarted the game, that’s it, there’s no going back.

The German soccer authorities have ordered replays on several occasions, to FIFA’s increasing annoyance. Finally, in 1995, FIFA reacted strongly when a second-division game between Leipzig and Chemnitzer was replayed because the referee had wrongly ejected a Leipzig player in the original game. FIFA ruled the replay null and void, reinstated the original result, and told the Germans that if they repeated the offense, they risked being banned from the World Cup.

FIFA’s hostility to these cases was no doubt exacerbated by the Germans’ use of television evidence to prove that wrong decisions had been made. Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, has repeatedly and forcefully made plain his opposition to the use of replays in soccer. His diktat during the 2002 World Cup – which contained some frightful refereeing errors – was typical: “As long as I am president I will make sure that no technical help will be introduced in refereeing because we have to rely on human beings – and human beings make mistakes . . . to introduce technical items will destroy an essential element of our game – the emotion. If our game becomes scientific then nobody will have any discussion any longer – if it was offside or not offside, if it’s inside or outside the penalty box.”

This extreme attitude was made to look downright absurd earlier this year during an English Premier League game between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. Virtually everyone in the stadium – to say nothing of the millions of television viewers – saw clearly that a long shot by Tottenham’s Pedro Mendes had entered the net before ManU keeper Roy Carroll scooped the ball out. But neither the referee nor his linesman had a clear view . . . and the goal was not given.

It was merely the latest in a growing list of farcical decisions on this crucial matter of whether or not the ball has entered the net. Their cumulative effect seems to have pushed Blatter into a rather less Luddite approach.

“Not a day goes by without technology making progres,” he explained. “We therefore have a duty to at least examine whether new technology could be used in soccer.”

FIFA has agreed to a trial of a special ball, containing a microchip, that has been invented by one of its main sponsors, Adidas. The idea is that when the ball goes over the goal line, it will transmit a beep to the wired-up referee.The device will be tested in Peru later this month, where each of the five stadiums to be used in the under-17 World Cup tournament has been equipped with the necessary infrastructure.

The problem is that, although ball-over-line calls are usually crucial, there are not that many of them. It is quite likely that the Peru tournament will proceed without the bugged ball being needed at all. Not to worry – the test will also include registering whether the ball has gone over the sidelines – something that happens dozens of times in each game, and which, up to now, has been the lineman’s responsibility to call. The linesman’s job appears safe enough for the moment – at least until the chip can determine which team it was that kicked the ball over the line.

Blatter – along with many others – simply does not look kindly on the idea of robot referees. “Let’s make sure soccer retains a human face,” he said recently. So human referees, along with their human errors, must be accepted. There is one exception, though – one that brings us back to the unfortunate Toshimitsu Yoshida. His error was, according to FIFA, rather different. It stemmed from ignorance – or maybe forgetfulness. He simply did not know the rules. So Uzbekistan must play Bahrain again . . . and you may be certain the referee will not be Yoshida. He has been suspended indefinitely from all officiating.