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This is the first in a series of reflections I'm doing on the World Cup. Others will address rules, reply, refs, etc. but I wanted to get this out of the way first.
On the 2nd of July, Ghana and Uruguay played a World Cup quarterfinal match for a spot among the last four teams standing. Tied 1-1 at the end of regulation, they went to extra time. In the 121st minute of the match, Ghana finally placed a second shot squarely on the goal, winning the game.
Or so you would think. Instead, Uruguay striker Luis Suarez slapped the ball away, earning himself a red card. A flustered Ghana striker missed the penalty, and Uruguay went on to win the shoot-out.
And people are defending Suarez.
I don't understand this. How about we have some context here?
Uruguay came into this game as the tournament's dark horse. Overlooked to start with, this team had started with an apathetic game against France before trashing South Africa and beating an impressive Mexico team in the group stage. After that, Uruguay earned a win over the South Korea squad. Led by the brilliance of Diego Forlan, with an attack bolstered by Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani, these guys were fun to watch and were winning hearts left and right.
But if Uruguay was the dark horse, Ghana was Cinderella in this tournament. Stuck in a group with no clear favorite behind Germany, they scraped through thanks mainly to Germany's dismantling of the Australian team and their own brilliant play holding Germany to a single goal. They then played through again to beat a slightly favored US team, and ran up against Uruguay.
And should have won, if not for the most unsportsmanlike display of the tournament.
Or again, consider:
A French striker, Thierry Henry, handled the ball blatantly in a game against Ireland leading up to the World Cup. He controlled the ball so that he was able to lift a cross for a teammate to score on. The ref missed it. Henry is universally reviled - and yet he didn't directly influence the game. What if his teammate had missed the header? We'd grouse about it, probably, but hey.
Suarez, in contrast, denied the opponent a win, directly - and some are calling him a hero. Imagine, if you will, that the ref had missed the call - with the rest of the problems so far, it's not that hard - and Suarez had escaped retribution. Can you imagine the outcry? Can you imagine anybody defending him?
But since he did get called out, apparently he's a hero. I call him a cheater - he broke the rules - and I get nonsense like, "He did the smart thing." "It's fine, he committed the foul and got penalized, nothing wrong with that." "Everyone would do this." It's mind-boggling.
There seems to be a huge mis-understanding behind this. As anyone who has ever tried to play soccer knows, you're not allowed to touch the ball with your hands unless you're the goalkeeper inside your own goal area. It's just not allowed. Some people seem to think the rule is, "If you touch the ball, the opponent gets a free kick." They then reason, "Suarez touched the ball, Ghana got a penalty (and Suarez was sent off for denying a goal), what's the problem?" According to these people, the only problem would be if the foul weren't called. The foul is apparently not a problem. Do you, please, see the problem with this?
If this were real life, and not a game, suppose I steal some work of art. And I get caught, but not before I've sold it off. I do my jail-time, I pay the fine. I guess I did nothing wrong, right?
Right.
Look, I can understand if you were rooting for Uruguay and wanted to say, "Suarez is an ass, but we'll take it." I don't understand how you can possibly defend what he did.
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Calgary25980 Posts
On July 13 2010 00:48 Musoeun wrote:
There seems to be a huge mis-understanding behind this. As anyone who has ever tried to play soccer knows, you're not allowed to touch the ball with your hands unless you're the goalkeeper inside your own goal area. It's just not allowed. Some people seem to think the rule is, "If you touch the ball, the opponent gets a free kick." They then reason, "Suarez touched the ball, Ghana got a penalty (and Suarez was sent off for denying a goal), what's the problem?" According to these people, the only problem would be if the foul weren't called. The foul is apparently not a problem. Do you, please, see the problem with this?
I can't reconcile this. Games have rules and punishments. What is the actual rule? "It's just not allowed" doesn't exist anywhere but in someone's imagination. Playing to win often dictates purposefully breaking rules.
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I agree with Chill. On a competitive stage where you're playing to win there is no such thing as "honour". Especially so when you're in the quarterfinals of one of the largest sporting events in the world. I think we also see Fucile trying to handball it out at the same time (I think it was Fucile). This is nearly in the same vein as fouling someone to stop their counterattack momentum, or stalling for time with substitutes.
It may offend your moral code but apart from that, from a completely objective standpoint everything that transpired in those last few minutes was perfectly fine. A handball, a red card, a penalty, and a miss.
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You don't play/watch soccer much do you?
If you touch the ball intentionally with your hand then it's a red card and, if it was inside the penalty area, the other team gets a penalty shot.
He didn't break any rules.
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"I call him a cheater - he broke the rules..."
![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FsLa1cMTCWU/TDp1xXDB1wI/AAAAAAAAAPg/0M-RpnX5c0E/s1600/World_Cup_2010_Fouls.png)
That's the number of fouls in the World Cup 2010. Most of these were intententional with the hope to gain an advantage for the own team. Of course Suarez' foul was the most critical one but that's how soccer games are played. You cannot single him out because his foul mattered more than any other foul in the WC, since they all had the same intention. Did you see Argentina's games? Messi was always covered and everytime he got the ball, the defenders tried to foul him. Did all of Argentina's opponents cheat? Of course not. They just tried to prevent a danger, so they could possibly win in the end. Have you ever seen what happens when a striker tries to break free from the defence? They always try to foul him, because it is too dangerous if the striker is alone against the keeper. That's braking the rules, but not cheating.
"If this were real life, and not a game, suppose I steal some work of art. And I get caught, but not before I've sold it off. I do my jail-time, I pay the fine. I guess I did nothing wrong, right?"
The analogy is certainly bad but your conclusion is even more so. Paying for your fault doesn't mean that you made nothing wrong, but that there has been "retribution" for your fault.
"They then played through again to beat a slightly favored US team..."
Well, actually Ghana was the slight favorite ever since they played so well in the group stage. But this doesn't matter in the discussion anyway...
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Let me ask you a question, it's the 121th minute of extra time, your goalie just failed at stopping the ball. Time slows and the ball inches towards your goal with only you between it and the back of the net. It's too high to head out and you can only reach it with your hands. You have two choices, one to stop it, one to not. One choice means you will not be going to the semi-finals, your whole team will be sent packing and going home. That means 2 years of practicing with your national team, down the drain, all that running and training you did, amounted to a ticket home. You have to wait four more years in which you don't even know what will happen to you before even getting the chance to get a shot at the world cup. The other choice gives you a sliver of a chance, not much, just enough space for breathing room. They get a penalty kick right at your goal and after that there is still penalty kicks to do. What would you do? Are you saying you wouldn't stop the ball?
It was wrong in that it was an illegal move. FIFA needs to review how to treat something like this if it happens again. But I think I can safely say, anyone in that position would do it.
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ggrrg: I see your foul chart. The vast majority of the fouls - if the games I watched are anything to go by - were hard tackles, charges, or trips, all things that happen naturally in the game. I'd like to think not more than about 30% were intention-to-foul fouls. That doesn't justify any of them, of course.
If the last five responses are anything to go by, I can pronounce the following judgment with complete confidence:
Sportsmanship is dead. The rules of the game have become tools to be used, rather than actually regulating play and defining the game. There appears to be no room left for the consideration, "It is just a game."
That will be all, ladies and gentlemen. This idealist is signing off.
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Calgary25980 Posts
On July 13 2010 01:38 Musoeun wrote:
That will be all, ladies and gentlemen. This idealist is signing off.
Ok closing this.
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EPT
