"You have mail," is something FIFA doesn't want to see on its computer screens today. This weekend, a flood of 400,000 angry Italian e-mails crashed FIFA's computer system. The Italian fans expressed their outrage over the refereeing of the 2-1 second-round defeat by co-hosts South Korea.

Italy's state broadcaster RAI even said it was considering legal action against FIFA. RAI argues it will lose earnings due to the decisions of the officials. Until Italy's defeat, games involving the Italians were drawing up to 20 million viewers and generating substantial advertising revenue for RAI. But ratings are bound to drop sharply now that the Italian team is no longer in the running.

Italy isn't the only country that blames the referees for its team's exit from the World Cup. Earlier, a controversial referee decision had made Spanish fans just as mad as the Italians. The referee in the quarter finals game between Spain and South Korea had not counted two Spanish goals. A television replay, however, showed that one of those goals was perfectly valid and that the linesman had made a mistake. The referee, however, disregarded the video evidence and denied Spain the winning goal. For the Spanish team, the World Cup was over.

FIFA admits mistakes

Over the weekend, criticism over the standard of refereeing mounted. FIFA called for calm and even admitted that referees had made "one or two major mistakes." But FIFA communications director Keith Cooper said "referees are only human and errors can never be entirely discounted." FIFA nevertheless dismissed ideas that video replays should be used to help the officials in difficult cases. "That is not on the agenda," Cooper said.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter told the referees' committee to "do a good job and appoint the best referees" for the semi-finals. The committee played safe by appointing six European officials. It chose Kim Milton Nielsen from Denmark for Wednesday's game between Brazil and Turkey and appointed Swiss referee Urs Meier for Tuesday's match between Germany and South Korea in Seoul.

German team also profits from referee errors

According to some observers, the fact that the Germans are still in the World Cup can partly be attributed to referees' mistakes. In last Friday's quarter-final match against the USA, Germany led 1:0 when the Americans came within a hair's breath of equalizing. Four minutes into the second half, American Greg Berhalter would have scored a goal, if the ball hadn't been handled on the line by German defender Torsten Frings. The referee, however, didn't notice Frings' hand play.

In the end, Germany won the game by a single goal and the US players had to pack their bags and head home.

Germany's team captain Oliver Kahn is now afraid his team may suffer from refereeing mistakes when it faces South Korea on Tuesday. "We may have one or two refereeing decisions against us," said Kahn. "If it happens, we must not let it demoralize us. If we have a goal disallowed, we must concentrate on scoring another one," the German goal keeper added.

Let's call the whole thing off...

So far, criticism of the World Cup referees in Germany has been relatively muted. And an Argentinean suggestion to cancel the whole tournament because of poor refereeing would never get a majority in Germany – not now that the country's team has gotten so far.

Outraged at what it sees as poor refereeing, the Argentinean paper La Nación called for the whole championship to be annulled. "This should happen right away. The whole World Cup should be declared null and void," the paper commented.

For Argentina, a pre-tournament favorite, this would be the only way to undo the humiliation its team suffered when it was kicked out of the tournament in the first round.