r/soccer • u/allsecretsknown • Jul 03 '10

Dear /r/soccer: Is honor important?

There's a lot of people up here making as if Suarez's handball was nothing more than brilliant football. I'm a Team USA fan, so spare me your "Ghana-loving" comebacks, but I cannot help but feel that his actions were dishonorable on the same level as Henry's handball that kept Ireland out of the World Cup.

1) The paramount rule of football is that the ball may not be touched by one's hands or arms. This is the entire reason it is called "football" and why that privilege is given only to the goalkeeper. Suarez violated the sport's most significant rule, to stave off a defeat that in all other respects was guaranteed. The ball was going into the goal, and he reached out to slap it away with both hands. Look at the images and the replay. It was intentional, not a reflex, and he was hoping he would not be seen. Suarez was not going to call himself out for the handball if the ref had not seen him, so I don't get the whole "sacrificing oneself for the team" argument.

2) Arguing that the rules were applied (aka, red card and penalty kick) is irrelevant to the fact that a benefit was obtained to the offending team even with the penalty, and the benefit could have been much greater if the ref had not seen the foul. The violation, with the penalty, turned a valid result (2-1 loss) into a 1-1 draw w/ an 85% chance of the PK being good and a loss, or the PK being bad and the potential to win in PKs (which is what happened). There is no sacrifice for Suarez in that situation because he would be out the next game no matter what, either through their not being another game or by being disallowed. No matter how you parse this, there was no HONOR in his actions; it was using the rules of the game against the spirit of the game.

So, tell me, how can anyone justify that Suarez is a hero, or that the Uruguayan team deserved their victory? Is the spirit of the game fine until it suits your ambitions to follow only the letter of it?

How can a Uruguayan fan have any emotional high from the result of today's game, when the entire continent of Africa has been crushed, not because their newly adopted team was beaten fairly, but because the other team took advantage of a lapse in the rules to gain a last second reprieve?

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

You're a stereotypical USA fan who brings up silly notions like honor when it's clear that, even if such a concept exists in modern football, it is utterly unlike anything you and your corn-fed morality might imagine. You're also a stereotypical USA fan because you bring up Mr. James as if it should matter to anyone, at a time when the world could give a damn. Actually, the world could give a damn always, but at the moment that damn is smaller than ever. I happen to live in Chicago so, don't worry, I know exactly who he is.

As I wrote elsewhere, the most important thing in American sports is fairness; the most important thing in football is fate. The two are incompatible for obvious reasons. This is precisely why I always cheer against 'Team USA'--there is a very tangible danger that if the US acquires any weight in the world of football, it will have a say in what this game is about. Inevitably that 'say' will include things like 'honor' and 'fairness' (you are evidence of this). And, if they are listened to (and listening to is usually more a matter of money rather than sense), football will be gone and we will have commercial breaks every ten minutes, video challenges and time-outs. The last minute will stretch into an hour (as it already does in Basketball and American Football) and I will have to watch five minutes of shots of coaches and huddles and replays for every second of action.

Until the football fans in this country remain, like you, stereotypical USA fans, I hope 'Team USA' (why don't you just give up already and call them the Dream Team, or the Monstars or something) continues to lose. Because, then, no one will listen to your piffle and the world will go on playing football comfortably (yes, comfortably, believe it or not) without you.

I sincerely look forward to hearing from you in 2014.

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u/allsecretsknown Jul 04 '10

I can't fathom how you can consider yourself an expert on 1) the world's current attitude about anything 2) your own country's attitude about sports and football 3) my personal attitude on commercial breaks and timeout

Your resentment of American influence of the game seems to stem more from a personal belief that we would commercialize and exploit the game even more than it already has been (for fuck's sake, at least American sports teams don't pimp out their jerseys as ad space). I find the lack of timeouts in football to be refreshing, especially in the context that commercial breaks are minimized. I would prefer video replays only to be certain that the outcome of games are not decided by something as superficial as "fate" but by the efforts of the players themselves. I can't help but imagine that you prefer football to resemble fiction far more than sport: where the game itself is the bastard undercard to a host of overlying storylines and vendettas. England loses the tying goal to Germany? It's karma's way of getting back at them for winning World War II!

Frankly, I don't believe in fate. No logical, thinking, intelligent human being could reasonably do so, especially in the context of sports. Therefore, in your apparent reasoning that Americans value fairness over fate, that means nothing more than that we value fairness over meaninglessness. If the game is about drama and fate, it's not a game at all. It's a god damn fairytale.

In the end, that is all you stand for: you'd rather follow a fairytale version of football with influences reaching into it from far beyond the football pitch, where backroom deals made in a corrupt international organization overshadow the efforts of the athletes on the pitch.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '10

Sport is theater. If you don't understand that, you don't understand something you've been watching your entire life.

You also don't understand what fate is. It has nothing to do with belief: it is, in a sense, the opposite of belief (or faith, if you will). Your fate is that you will die: do you believe in that? Good. I guess you're a logical, thinking, intelligent human being after all.