I’m with you, if we also include the blatant diving done by nearly every team as well. Seriously, when announcers fault a North Korean weakness as “they are too honest, it’s going to cost them,” in reference to not acting like a complete jackass when people are within a yard of you, then the game rules have some problems.
But the game is what it is. If we don’t take it as it’s played then we could argue against anything and everything going on. One rule doesn’t spoil the game, it’s a combination of rules and how they are maintained and enforced.
It does suck for Ghana and Africa as a whole though, it would have been nice to see one of their teams make the semi’s. Didn’t Uruguay knock out more than one of their teams?
JM1
1782
They’ll be missing Van der Wiel, De Jongh, and maybe Mathijsen too.
I’m behind the spirit of what you’re saying Tim. That’s why I said it felt wrong that Suarez saved his team by committing that foul, without which they’d be eliminated. But the rules are what they are, so it isn’t cheating necessarily, just not in the spirit that I wish the game was played. That spirit being the one I see a lot in concacaf teams and teams like Paraguay where you sometimes see strikers fighting with every ounce of their strength to stay on their feet despite being fouled so that they can go on to score, instead of instantly flopping to the ground in agony.
Suarez did a hand ball. He got caught red handed. He got punished. Ghana got a penalty kick that would have won the game and completely whiffed it. They got more chances in the PKs. Suarez is out for the rest of the Cup.
You want to rail about injustice? Let me tell you about the fucking tuck rule.
JM1
1785
Diving is something different. Diving is cheating, by making it appear that something occurred on the field of play that didn’t, attempting to fool the referee into making an incorrect decision. It’s deeply dishonest. What Suarez did wasn’t dishonest.
For me diving is one of the worst aspects of the game. The referees don’t help by being totally inconsistent. Brazil dived repeatedly and acrobatically throughout the first half, and I rarely saw a Dutch player do anything as bad. Then the first Dutch player to dive blatantly in the second half gets a yellow card. I know tons of players will gets sent off if the referees clamped down, but they’d quickly learn their lesson.
It’s the same situation with diving as with Uruguay’s hand ball on the line: there’s no real cost and plenty to gain. Although I hate the players for doing it, it’s also understandable why they do. Why not throw yourself on the ground when you are going to get a free-kick once every three flops, and a yellow card almost never? You aren’t rewarded for honesty, and FIFA need to do something about that.
I think you should pick up a dictionary and look up “cost.”
Yes. Diving and what Suarez did would be analogous if every time some one dived, they received a yellow card.
With cheating, you have to have the intent not to get caught. Is kicking the ball out of bounds cheating? The rules state that you must keep the ball in bounds, if not it is awarded to the other team. So when a defender sends a rebound into the stands are they cheating?
Germany have been like this, much to my surprise. They have a bad reputation for diving, but played a very honest game against England. For their first goal, Upson was all over Klose, and he could have gone down for a penalty and probably got it, but he fought him off and scored under pressure.
Soooo, who wins tomorrow?
The favorites are Argentina and Spain.
No, you just have to deliberately break the laws to gain an advantage - as per the dictionary definition I gave above.
You think Suarez wanted to be caught? You think that he would have run up to the referee and said “send me off!” and “give them a penalty!” if he’d not been seen?
The referees miss a lot - see the England “goal” that crossed the line against Germany. He’d have been hoping to get away with it for sure.
Is kicking the ball out of bounds cheating? The rules state that you must keep the ball in bounds, if not it is awarded to the other team. So when a defender sends a rebound into the stands are they cheating?
No, because there’s no rule that you “must” keep the ball within the field of play, only an explanation of what will result if the ball goes out of bounds.
baruk
1793
If Suarez’s handball wasn’t cheating, perhaps it’s an exploit? We’re well into semantic nit-picking anyway. Personally I’d give the referee the discretion to award a goal in such a situation.
Suarez is out for the rest of the Cup.
One game ban, he’s back for the final.
Spain will probably edge out a 1 goal victory against Paraguay in a boring match almost exactly like the one against Portugal. Hope to be wrong here but…
Argentina has the names, and then also has Messi and they are widely considered to be favorites against a rather young German team. I REALLY want to be wrong here, I hope this one is a full on attacking match and at the end, as Lineker said, Germany wins.
“Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes, and in the end Germany always wins.”
Gary Lineker
Except technically he is out of the rest of the Cup in all likelihood because a Suarez-less Uruguay is going to get rolled by Holland. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow!
I don’t see how everybody is getting worked up against Uruguay for what happened at the end of the game. The last free kick was set up by a blatant dive by Ghana. I’ve watched it numerous times on the DVR and it’s one of the most blatant dives you will ever see… nobody within a yard of him, as soon as the ball goes over his head, he goes down arms flailing. The way it played out is simply karmic justice for how they got the ball in front of the goal in the first place. You have to have a pretty one-sided sense of ethics to see the whole affair simply as Uruguay being a dirty team.
Although I picked Team Cokehead in the picks thread, I think Germany can win this if they manage to pressure the Argentinian back line. If die Mannshaften get a goal up early, this could be ugly.
I can see the Paraguay-Spain game going to penalties at 0-0, with Spain having something like 90%+ possition.
So, Tim, if a hyper-competitive player thinks only way to stop a game-winning goal at the end of a game is to use his hand, you expect him to just stand there and let it go in? In a winner-takes-all elimination game? And you don’t think that’s at all naive?
If my choices are winning Tim Partlett’s respect or becoming a hero in my home country, I’m choosing the second option.
Straight red’s are 3 game bans minimum unless FIFA sees ‘egregous referree error’ like the card against Cahill in the Australia-Germany (IIRC) game. Suarez clearly handballed on the line; if FIFA overturns that then I’d be surprised.
robsam
1800
I’m just going to repeat what I said in the other thread, could make for lots of fun for you guys to bash me tomorrow if I turn out to be wrong, especially about Germany.
I really like Germany in this World Cup, KD Lang is amazing.
Okay, this is what is going to happen in the World Cup this weekend. Mock me now or praise me later, this is gonna happen! Uruguay will beat Ghana, the Netherlands will kick Brazil to the curb, Germany will make Argentina look like little children with bad hair and Spain will squeak out a win against Paraguay.
