That entirely depends on your point of view, perhaps influenced by your cultural upbringing, perhaps influenced by your coach and fellow players, perhaps some other set of circumstances. Cheating is not as black and white as some would like to think, which is why, as we move toward the semi-finals of the 2010 World Cup, we're consumed with the recent performances of Luis Suarez of Uruguay and Arjen Robben of Holland that had profound influences on their respective teams advancing out of the quarter-final round.
Let's take diving (or sometimes known as "simulation") as an example. To over-generalize for a moment in order to make a point, the British tend to view diving as one of the purest and most despicable forms of cheating because they are consumed with the moralistic ideal of the level playing field - fair play, fight like a man, and all that. (If you don't believe me, just listen to any of a number of call-in sports talk shows on BBC radio) And, they view the referee as the ultimate authority figure in the game - one that should not be duped, deceived, embarrassed. The ref is to be respected.
However, if you grew up in, oh, I don't know - let's pick on the Italians shall we - Italy, for example, you would perhaps look at diving as more of a strategy. Again, generalizing with a broad brush, the English see the Italians as among the dirtiest footballers on the planet. But, the Italians use the term furbizia, the art of guile, to describe their approach, as I learned from Andrea Tallarita's insightful article, summarized as follows.
To Italians, cheating is doing something that your opponent cannot do, or exploiting resources to which your opponent has no access. Both sides can commit certain types of fouls, so those are not considered cheating. Both sides have the ability to take free kicks before the goalkeeper is ready, so that is not seen as cheating either. Verbal provocation of one's opponent is a classic form of furbizia (see Materazzi's verbal baiting of France's Zidane in the 2006 World Cup final game, resulting in Zidane's retaliatory head-butt to Materazzi's chest, Zidane's ejection from the game, and Italy's subsequent victory and world championship).
Diving is also a classic form of furbizia.
In Italy, the diver is not so much looked down upon as is the referee that doesn't catch the diver. This is not so much strictly Italian football protocol as it is a natural extension of the total disrespect of authority figures by Italians, as argued in John Foot's fine book on the history of Italian Footbal. The expert of European soccer, Andy Brassell, described this on a recent episode of BBC Five Live's World Football Phone-In as something borne of cultural phenomena and a mistrust of the referee's ability, or perhaps a lack of willingness, to call the game fairly. As Andy put it, the player views the referee and the situation something like this: "If you are going to play me, I'm going to play you."
To these footballers, soccer is an art, sometimes a dark art - an art where guile is a major part of the tool box.
So, here we have two irreconcilable visions of the same game. One, fair-play where the referee is a respected figure. Two, the use of guile and gamesmanship where the referee as authority figure serves as the object of total distrust and disrespect.
Exhibit One: Arjen Robben Arjen Robben's incessant diving in Holland's recent World Cup quarter-final match against Brazil drove some of the Brazilians mad - Felipe Melo in particular (see photo at left where Melo is screaming at Robben who is feigning injury). In the second half, Melo lost his cool. Already on a yellow card, Melo brought down Robben with a tackle, and then stamped down on the Dutch striker's thigh with venom, bringing Japanese referee Nichimura to give Melo his second yellow card of the match and expulsion from the game with the automatic red card (see inset photo above).
Brazil, down 2-1, and down to 10 men, had a hugh hill to climb. It was a hill of their own making. As Tim Vickery put it on the most recent BBC FIve Live World Football Phone-in show, Dunga's Brazil had an "emotional collapse" in the second half, attributable directly to head coach Dunga himself, for when you have an up-tight coach, you have an uptight squad of players. This emotional collapse was "collective" as Vickery put it.
This wasn't anything that just popped out of nowhere. Dunga had been ranting and raving the entire tournament, especially during the rather shameful finish to their Group Stage match against the Ivory Coast.
My point here is that it was Holland's continual niggling fouls (e.g., Marco van Basten), and especially Robben's continual, unabashed deception of the referee by simulation - flat out diving - that put the Brazilians over the edge without the lifeline of emotional strength to rely upon for a comeback in the final minutes of the match.
The Dutch had killed the Brazilians with an orange-tinged furbizia. Did the Dutch, especially Robben, cheat?
Exhibit Two: Luis SuarezOn the same day, Uruguay knocked Ghana out of the tournament with a finish filled with drama and range of human emotion of Shakespearean proportions. Within the final few seconds, there were: desperate Ghanaian attempts on goal; a hand ball saving the last attempt; and a penalty kick, given as part of the punishment for the illegal save, that was missed.
That brings us to Luis Suarez, who found himself standing on the goal line next to a Uruguyan teammate (the goal keeper was busy out in front of goal) during those indescribable seconds.
No diving here. This is about making hand contact with the ball in a sport where that act is as forbidden as premeditated murder in society. And the contact that Suarez made with the ball by using his hand(s) wasn't your typical handball called somewhere out in the open field. This was directly in front of goal (see photo at left), saving what most certainly would have been the goal that knocked his country out of the World Cup and sent an African nation to the semi-finals for the first time.
Suarez didn't attempt to deceive the referee - this was a clear violation in clear view of the referee. No interpretation was required of the referee. Handball in front of goal that saved a goal. Red card. Penalty kick.
And that's where the debate starts.
The argument begins that Suarez had a choice: whether to try to legally head the shot away, or to try to illegally deflect the shot with his hand.
That of course presumes that Suarez was not operating in that moment out of instinctual movement - he had time to make a conscious choice and then act according to that decision.
Some want the laws of the game changed to preserve fair play in situations such as the scene the world witnessed on Friday - award the goal if the referee determines that a goal would have been scored but for the illegal hand ball. Some want to look at other sports, such as NFL football, rugby, and cricket for ideas to change the laws of soccer.
Some are more upset about the way Suarez and his teammates reacted to his action, not with a measure of shame, but with outright glee (see photo at right).
"The Hand of God now belongs to me. Mine is the real Hand of God", said Suarez, referring to the most famous hand ball in the history of soccer, that of Diego Maradona in the 1986 World Cup. "I made the best save of the tournament. Sometimes in training I play as a goalkeeper so it was worth it. There was no alternative but for me to do that and when they missed the peanlty I thought "It is a miracle and we are alive in the tournament.'"
Suarez's teammate Diego Forlan added, "It is a pity we won't have Luis for the semi-final but he made a good save. He didn't score a goal but he saved one. He was sent off but he saved the game for us. Now we will have to try and do our best to reach the final [and hope] he will be available for that."
There is no sense of an acknowledgement of a violation of any fair-play principles in those quotes. Suarez committed a foul and received his punishment. Ghana just couldn't take advantage. It is that simple in the minds of the participants. They did what anybody else would have done in that position, for their team and their country. I guess some have God on their side, and others don't.
John Pantsil of the Ghana team disagreed. He (somewhat predictably) said that "the goal should have stood rather than the player being sent off." He added that "[i]n the same situation, there is no chance the Ghana players would have used our hand. In any case, we would have made sure we would clear the ball with our head."
It is impossible to judge Pantsil's comments, however his statement that "there is no chance the Ghana players would have used [their] hand" makes me think of the countless times I have seen players in front of goal or on the goal line with their arms down or even their hands clasped to keep them from any instinctive move to fend the ball away with an arm or hand.
The arms of Suarez and his teammate positioned at the goal line were flailing about like flags on a windy day.
FIFA decided that the one-match ban already mandated by the red card was enough, meaning that Suarez will be able to return to action for either the third-place match on Saturday or the final on Sunday if Uruguay defeat Holland on Tuesday. John Leicester's article at the NY Times argues otherwise. I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Leicester who writes that FIFA should have done its duty by suspending Suarez for both of Uruguay's last two games, not just the semi-final.
My logic is that without Suarez's unlawful act, Uruguay would be out of the tournament. And, without his illegal 'best save of the tournament', Suarez would not have the opportunity to play this coming weekend. Why should he now be given that opportunity, only made possible by his unlawful act?
I also agree with Mr. Leicester that changing the laws of the game is not the answer because that just puts more pressure on the match officials, in an already impossible job, to "judge whether [the ball] would or would not have gone in had X, Y, or Z happened, or not happened." Asking a referee to determine "ball trajectories and whether a hand stopped it from hitting the net" is more of a "job for technologies... not overworked referees." That's just adding another layer of human judgment to an already multi-layered mountain of judgment.
In this instance, the Laws of the Game are fine. The punishment was not.
Did Robben and Suarez cheat?
Both players did not act in a sportsmanlike manner, and they both went further than simple gamesmanship because their actions were against the laws of the game. Therefore, the only statement of fact is that both broke the game's rules, but only Suarez was punished.
Relevant to Robben, Jim Allen of the U.S. Soccer Federation writes that simulation (diving) occurs when the player "attempts to deceive the referee by feigning injury or pretending to have been fouled." Whether the contact would or would not have caused the player to fall is relevant to a decision about a foul committed by the player's opponent (a foul not worthy of a card), but not a decision about misconduct (a foul worthy of a card). In other words, a caution (yellow card) in this instance is for faking or exaggeration - where simple faking is usually to deceive the referee that a foul occurred, exaggerating is often focused on deceiving the ref into thinking that a foul went beyond "careless" and should be carded. The card for diving is punishment for attempting to con the referee into a favorable decision - to get the ref to either call a foul that wasn't or to card for a true foul that really wasn't misconduct.
With regard to handling the ball, the issue with Suarez that is at the root of recent popular public commentary is whether his act was deliberate. As Jim Allen writes, "deliberate contact" means that the player could have avoided the touch but chose not to, that the player's arms were not in a normal playing position at the time, or that the player deliberately continued an initially accidental contact for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage. Deliberate contact in this context does not include protecting one's body - it is done to gain an advantage.
After watching countless replays of Suarez's act, it was an act not of instinctual movement - it was a deliberate attempt to keep the ball from going into the net at any cost. He was correctly sent off but not punished to the extent commensurate with the offense (he deserves expulsion for the remainder of the tournament based on the logic presented previously).
In the case of Robben, he repeatedly tried to deceive the referee into believing: (1) a foul had been committed; and, in some cases (2) that the foul went beyond careless and should have been carded. It was Robben that should have been carded on more that one occasion, but he was never punished.
Whether Robben or Suarez cheated is decided by the ethics of the viewer, largely determined by one's view of furbuzia. One man's cheat is another man's strategist.
Personally, I find Robben's tactics, and lack of punishment, far more distasteful than Suarez's illegal 'save' of Ghana's winning goal, which was rightfully but insufficiently punished. Robben's actions are truly harmful due to what Cesar Torres wrote last year about how diving puts soccer's integrity at stake. I believe the case of Robben is far more dangerous to the acceptance, integrity, and continual well-being of the game than the case of Suarez. And that opinion comes with sincere condolences to the national football team of Ghana who I wish so much could have carried the African torch into the semi-finals.
PHOTOS:
Felipe Melo screams at a fallen Arjen Robben (inset: Melo is sent off). Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images.
Luis Suarez on the goal line handles a Ghana shot on goal in the final seconds. Reuters Soccer Blog.
Suarez is carried off the pitch as a hero after Uruguay defeated Gnaha. Reuters Soccer Blog.
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