World Cup: Uruguay, Ghana, Suarez
This was the end of the World Cup. I had no choice. I have the ‘Hand of God’ now.
I did it so that my teammates could win the penalty shoot-out. When I saw Gyan miss the penalty it was a great joy.
So said Luis Suarez in the aftermath of his goalline “save” and Ghana’s subsequent penalty miss.
Not entirely unpredictably there was uproar across ‘t interweb after Uruguay won the penalty shoot out, with many people wanting changes to the rules to introduce the automatic award of a goal without resorting to a penalty kick.
Whatever your opinion on the definition of cheating, upon which subject there was also much debate – for what it’s worth my view is that Suarez did cheat and was punished as an individual, but Uruguay as a team benefited from it – these knee-jerk calls for sweeping reform are tugging on the lid of a can of especially wriggly worms.
Whilst the Suarez Interdiction (© Robert Ludlum) was a clear cut case of the deliberate prevention of a certain goal by foul means, where should the line be drawn?
Do we introduce an automatic goal for any goalline handball or do we require the referee to make a judgement of intent?
How do we deal with the handball in front of the post? The ball might go in, it might rebound into the path of an attacker, it might go out of play. Does the referee now have to judge this or do we introduce technology to assist?
Does it have to be right on the goalline to trigger the award of a goal? What about 2 yards in front? Ten? The other defender on the line might have blocked it legally.
In a perfect world there would be perfect justice. But football is anything but a perfect world. Neither is it a court of law, rather a mere game taken too seriously for it’s own good.
If it were either of these things then Uruguay’s Sebastien Abreu would have been awarded a penalty about 10 minutes prior after an obvious trip by Paintsil.
Suarez certainly prevented a goal, but he did not prevent Ghana from winning – they missed 3 out of 5 penalty kicks when scoring just that first effort would have done the job.
What is done is done. Suarez may forever be remembered for that moment, as a hero in Montevideo, as a villain in Accra.
Tragic though it may have been for Ghana, perfect justice is an impossible ambition, and no amount of rule changes will solve that.
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andrew
By why demand perfection in the “clear” goal rule? Everything else a ref does (with the exception of off-side calls, which are the domain of assistants anyway) involves interpretation. It seems absurd to pretend that because we can’t create a perfect bright line rule in this instance it shouldn’t exist. The rest of officiating in football is all referee discretion with what are at best guidelines provided by FIFA. It seems that rugby’s penalty try rule would be absolutely appropriate. Suarez made a calculation that, and here I agree, essentially involved cheating. A “penalty goal” would remove the ability to make that calculation, or at least not make it pay off at any point. It won’t be perfect, but then again, nothing is, and who would want a perfect game anyway?
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@andrew
I guess we are looking at the same problem from opposite sides of the argument. Certainly I agree that the Suarez handball is persuasive evidence in favour of penalty goals.
The point I was trying to make was that amidst all the emotional clamour it is easy to make these demands for new rules in a bid to prevent a repeat in future.
Fair enough. But the introduction of a penalty goal also creates opportunity for a new type of injustice – how long would it be before a team are awarded a goal when they shouldn’t have been?
Even with Suarez, some have argued that he was in a position to head the ball, or even that it would have gone on to “hit him in the face”. Even with a decision so seemingly clear cut, it is rare that everyone views it the same way.
So yes, a penalty goal would likely have been a fairer punishment for this particular incident, but that does not mean that football would become fairer if penalty goals were introduced.
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Mark, all laws have the potential to create injustice at the margin, the question is whether they are unjust in the obvious cases. I’d argue goal-line handballs are, in both directions. Largely accidental handballs are either not penalised or penalised very harshly. Cynical handballs create an incentive to “cheat”.
Handball is far from the only law either. Football has a number of laws where the balance between the reward for getting a foul outweighs the risk of “diving” for it. It also has a number of laws where the risk to the referee for applying the law outweighs their ability to adjudicate fairly.
If the penalty for shirt-pulling (or any other offence in the box that doesn’t prevent a direct goal-scoring opportunity) was a direct free-kick 22 yards out, not a penalty, you’d see a lot more free-kicks given, and a lot less shirt-pulling. Similarly, you’d see a lot less diving if an indirect free-kick had to travel 10m before being played, if an attacking player had to remain closest to the ball to receive the free-kick, or if an advantage rule was played ala rugby. And finally, if a yellow card attracted a 10min sin-bin you’d see far fewer professional fouls.
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Keith
Maybe I’m in the minority but cheating is when you go outside the game to help yourself, your team, etc. Spying on a team, doping, having extra practices, buying off a ref is all cheating. What Suarez did was illegal but within the game. He broke a rule, so a penalty should be and was awarded. I see it as the equivalent to a tackle from behind, a jersey tug, holding in the box, etc. I don’t know why Suarez is being vilified for what he did. If Rooney did that to save England he’d be a hero. He’d be sacrificing himself for his team.
I think predicting a goal is nearly impossible. In American Football the rules state that the referee cannot predict the course of events if they did not happen. If Suarez was the only one on the line and the he reached back to swat the ball away we could say with 99.9% certainty that the ball would go in. But because it didn’t you cannot reward that decision. There is a minute chance that some other course of action happens. Basically if the goal didn’t happen, even if it clearly was going to be a goal, you can’t reward a goal. I think the red card and penalty shot was a fair penalty. If Ghana buried the penalty shot nobody would be talking about this. The guy missed.
One thing I thought about was maybe since Uruguay had only 10 players maybe they would only have been allowed to shoot with 4 guys. That makes up for the red card. If after the original 4 and 5 shoot then it goes to 1:1 since Uruguay already paid for the red card. That could be a way to make up for red cards during penalty shots.
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Where to start…
First of all; this is no “hand of God” Ref caught him and punished him appropriately. As much as the laws allowed.
Question is; should there be a footballing equivalent to rugby’s “Penalty Tey” ? For me; no. How often, in any match of importance, has there been something like this?
Having said all that. Go the Netherlands.