Posts by giovanni tiso
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So... does anything count as cheating, in football?
Scoring a goal with your hand and then, when the ref points to the kick-off restart, not saying anything: cheating. Simulating a foul, getting e penalty out of it and not saying anything when it's awarded: cheating. There are a lot of small instances like that in every football game: claiming it should be a throw-in for your team when you know it isn't, etc. That's cheating, albeit minor, and irritating as hell. What Suarez did wasn't cheating. It was fouling and getting caught and benig promptly and appropriately penalised for it.
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Apart from the fact that it's a barely coherent blog post, you'll note that it's not about Suarez, nor is it about professional fouling.
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Sorry, I didn't realise you needed a Football union card to post on this blog.
Oh, bollocks. And furthermore, you know that it's bollocks. All that some people here are saying is that you need to make a little more of an effort to understand the culture of a sport before you accuse somebody of cheating.
And your clever use of the dictionary notwithstanding, a person who commits a professional foul in football is not a cheater. Has never been, will never be.
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Are you simply saying that he used the rules as they stand to his best advantage, or what?
Although I suspect in the end it came down to instinct, he did what any other footballer in his position would have done. If you're defending, and somebody's about to score, your job is to stop them from scoring. You can do it legally, by heading a ball away or making a legal tackle, but if you figure you can't do that, you'll do it by fouling: you either hack the player down, or stop a ball with your hands on the line. They're both fouls, they both attract a penalty and - if the referee deems that you saved a certain goal - they both attract a red card. So if it's early in the game or if your team is ahead by two it may be unwise to leave the team undermanned in exchange for a slight reduction in the chances of a goal. At any rate, those are your options. And letting the ball go in isn't the popular one.
It had never happened before in this particular way - in the last minute of extra time of a world cup quarterfinal - but deliberate hand-balls in the penalty box happen all the time. Australia did it twice in three games this year. On neither occasion the culprit was called a cheat, even though the second time the ref didn't spot it and it cost another team access to the round of sixteen. Yet Suarez gets called a cheat, for reasons that border on the mysterious. Although as in the case of Italy and diving I don't discount that a certain amount of racial profiling comes into it.
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@Keir not quite the same though is it. Suarez is more of a blood-doper in cycling. He cheated to gain advantage. Sure he got caught and was penalised, but that doesn't make him any less of a fuckwit.
I don't think fuckwit means what you think it means.
You know what the football equivalent of a drug cheat in cycling is? A drug cheat. If Suarez had been found to have been using a banned substance, he would have been disqualified for at least a year. Instead he committed an infraction, for which he received the requisite penalty. To repeat: if he had been found guilty of conduct outside of the bounds of the game, he would have got more than the automatic one-game suspension in the post-game review. He did not. Nor was Ghana awarded an automatic win, which is also contemplated by the rule book in exceptional circumstances.
This thing only upsets people who don't normally follow football, which is fine - hey, that's what world cups are for, innit? - and be upset at Suarez if you must, but really as Keir says you could be making more of an effort to understand what the codes of the sport that you're accusing the guy to have cheated at are.
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I understand wanting Ghana to win- and feeling they wuz robbed. I felt it myself.
Is it worth pointing out that the free kick that led to that last chance was claimed by the Ghanaian player in spite of the fact that he had tripped over the ball?
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quite without any attempt to understand the mores of the sport
Well said that man.
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I'm sure Allied and Hanover investors are saying pretty much the same about Horton and Watson right about now - "gosh, I may think they're slimy thieving pricks but you have to admire how well they went about it, eh"
Craig, is it you?
I expect Suarez to be compared to Herod next.
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I think the Spanish defence and Puyol in particular could be horribly exposed. But it depends on how fast the German players are allowed to run at them. Today Argentina's problem (other than in the first goal) wasn't the defence, it was the midfield.
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Without Ballack, to boot.