On the opening day of the World Cup a referee from Japan, Yuichi Nishimura, gave Brazil an extremely generous penalty and denied Croatia a fair equaliser (at least it looked fair, though there is some dispute about it). The following day Wilmar Roldán, a 34-year-old from Colombia at his first senior international tournament, and his two assistants, both also Colombian (the fourth official, Norbert Hauata, was from Tahiti), wrongly disallowed two Mexico goals in an artificially narrow 1-0 win over Cameroon. On Monday, Switzerland had a perfectly good goal disallowed for offside by the Uzbek referee, Ravshan Irmatov – with the aid of assistants from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan – and eventually required a stoppage-time goal to beat Ecuador. The tournament so far has been marked by brilliant footballers improvising sparkling attacking football and creating a torrent of goals while erratic officials trail in their wake needlessly disallowing them.

The history books show other World Cup howlers, including Diego Maradona’s Hand of God goal against England in the 1986 quarter-final (refereed by Ali Bin Nasser, a Tunisian), England’s still controversial third goal in the 1966 final (awarded by Tofik Bakhramov, an Azerbaijani linesman) and the bizarre handling of Spain’s 2002 quarter-final against South Korea by Gamal Ghandour, an Egyptian referee, with the memorably useless assistance of Michael Ragoonath, a linesman from Trinidad. As a result of their inadequacy officials from 2006 onwards have worked in three-man teams, generally from the same country and at the very least sharing a common language, a move which has reduced errors but manifestly not eliminated them.

It seems ludicrous to force footballers to endure a long and arduous qualification process, only to allow inexperienced officials plucked from obscure outposts to render their efforts worthless with their hazy judgments. Sure, referees also go through a selection process of sorts. For this tournament an initial longlist of 52 three-man teams was whittled down to 25, plus eight pairs of spares. In other words, of 156 officials who started the process, 91 – a little over 58% – made it to the tournament (of 21 proposed referees from Asia, Africa and North & Central America 15 have made the cut, 71.5%). “The referees selected for the World Cup in Brazil have been chosen based especially on their personality and their quality in football understanding by being able to read the game and the teams’ tactical approaches towards each game,” Fifa said.

Just as it is for players, experience of major competitions must be an advantage and many of the whistle-wielders in Brazil have plenty of it: of the nine European referees seven were at Euro 2012 and four have taken charge of Champions League finals; of South America’s five, three were at the Copa América in 2011 and three have taken charge of Copa Libertadores finals. While African club football may not be at the same level as the major European leagues, all of that continent’s five World Cup referees were at the last two Africa Cup of Nations.

Should the World Cup, the pinnacle of the world’s most popular sport, be officiated only by those who regularly experience the heated atmosphere of top-level football, and are inured to the pressure and the parody, the Twitter storms and death threats that sadly and predictably tend to come with it? The answer is probably yes. But should the World Cup, the tournament of which all in the game dream be they from Abidjan or Aberdeen, feature referees from established nations only? The answer must surely be no.

Perhaps what has been learned is that the bigger confederations need to open the doors to their major club and international competitions and allow the best referees from the game’s diaspora to prove and improve themselves there, just as their players do. Increasingly the cream of the world’s footballing talent hone their skills at clubs in only a few nations but referees are still largely confined to the country and continent of their birth. While in a game increasingly shorn of romance there is pleasure to be had from watching Lionel Messi getting bossed around by a 39-year-old teacher from El Salvador, it might help if the two could meet more often.

But perhaps what football’s major powers need to do most of all is to cast aside their supposed superiority. More riffling through World Cup history shows that the ludicrously offside goal Carlos Tevez scored against Mexico in the last World Cup 2006 – “I know I was offside but as long as they say it was a goal it’s OK for me and the team” – was awarded by Stefano Ayroldi, an Italian; that the official who allowed Harald Schumacher to stay on the field after his assault on Patrick Battiston in 1982 was Charles Corver, a Dutchman, while the nearest linesman, Bob Valentine, was a Scot; and, in perhaps the most inexplicably hapless incident of them all, when Croatia’s Josep Simunic was booked three times in a single game in 2006, the blundering card-waver, Graham Poll, was at his second World Cup, had previously taken charge of FA and Uefa Cup finals and came from Tring, Hertfordshire. Some may find it hard to put their faith in officials from Bahrain or Gambia but on the field the mistakes are attributable to humans, not passports.