Yesterday, all sides came away annoyed to differing degrees. Mansfield Town can be annoyed that the referee, and his assistants, didn't spot the handball. It says rather a lot that both their goalkeeper and manager have said that Suarez did what most other players would do.
Luis Suarez can feel aggrieved that he has been unfairly treated. Consider the media opprobrium poured on Suarez over this incident and the way Peter Crouch's recent basketball re-enactment was all but laughed off. Few realise that Demba Ba did similar against Reading earlier in the year. Rickie Lambert scored in similar circumstances earlier this year. None of these people were labelled a ''cheat'' on air by the commentator.
Much of the coverage has been contemptible. I am grateful to James Gray for highlighting James Lawton's piece on this. Lawton, a blowhard if ever there were one, believes this was a ''a diabolical act'' and, more!, that it was done with ''diabolic intent''. Even factoring in poetic licence, this is moronic and we should not be afraid to call it moronic. There is considerable doubt as to whether Suarez was guilty of an offence at all let alone suggesting both that he knew what he was doing and that he had planned to do it before he walked onto the pitch!
Moreover, other papers have focused on Suarez's celebration which involved him kissing his hand. Seemingly ignoring this is his standard celebration. It isn't as if they haven't seen it often enough this season.
So... what does the law say?
The Laws of the Game are clear in this regard. Under Law 12 (Fouls and Misconduct) there is a section on 'Handling the ball'. Most people who spout forth about ''hand to ball'' and ''ball to hand'' have never read this.
This is what the law states:
Handling the ball involves a deliberate act of a player making contact with the ball with his hand or arm. The referee must take the following into consideration:
- the movement of the hand towards the ball (not the ball towards the hand)
- the distance between the opponent and the ball (unexpected ball)
- the position of the hand does not necessarily mean there is an infringement
- touching the ball with an object in the hand counts as an infringement
- hitting the ball with a thrown object counts as an infringement.
1 and 3. Does Suarez move his hand towards the ball? As Nick Miller writes here it is difficult to be sure that this was deliberate and, if anything, Suarez moves his arm away as the ball hits him suggesting he was actually trying to get his paws out of the way.
2. How far is he away from the ball? Given the speed of the ball rebounding from his original shot it seems harsh to suggest this was deliberate.
Saint Robbie, Saint Paolo, and Saint Miroslav
Very recently, in similar circumstances, Miroslav Klose handled the ball into the net for Lazio. Klose walked to the referee asked for the goal to be disallowed. Twitter immediately asked ''why didn't Suarez do the same?''.
It is a legitimate point. The problem is the only reason we know about Klose's actions (or Robbie Fowler's or Paolo di Canio's) is that they are rarities. I can think of a handful of examples in my lifetime where a player has acted in a moraly good way.
These examples make the heart sing and spark a few articles about the death of the Corinthian spirit but, in reality, the overwhelming majority of players don't run to the referee to get them to overturn the decision. Far from it.
Henry didn't. Ba didn't. Lambert didn't. Crouch didn't. Messi didn't when he handled the ball in against Espanyol. Neuer didn't when he knew full well Frank Lampard's shot had crossed the line at the World Cup (Quite the opposite. He was clear afterwards he actively deceived the referee:''I tried not to react to the referee and just concentrate on what was happening. I realised it was over the line and I think the way I carried on fooled the referee into thinking it was not over'').
It is a puny defence to argue that just because others cheat that justifies your cheating. It becomes less puny when one remembers that the overwhelming majority of players would have done the same as Suarez and that the overwhelming majority of players cheat all the time. It is endemic within the game.
Players dive. Players handle the ball. Players lie to the referee. Players encroach free-kicks. Defenders don't admit when they kick a striker. Players claim corners and goal-kicks when they know they were last to touch the ball. Players claim for handball when they know it has the opponent's body. Players taking a booking, or committing ''a clever foul''. All of these are deliberate cheating. Some are frowned upon. Some aren't considered cheating. Some are encouraged.
We should admit and acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of players are willing to break and bend the rules.
We should admit and acknowledge that most fans are hypocrites. We don't really mind if members of our teams act badly. We will usually dress it up in different ways. We will look to justify the behaviour. We know full well our hero dives but we will dust off the usual euphemisms. ''He made the most of it'' we cry. ''He went down easily'' we scream.
It isn't just fans that do this. It is the wider punditariat. Consider how foreign players are treated when it comes to diving and how Gareth Bale is treated. Bale has been booked five times for diving this season already. Would a foreign player - would Suarez - have the caveat 'but some of those are very questionable'?
Suarez is as Suarez does
I won't discuss his racism case here. It was, as the FA put it, the most difficult case they've ever had to adjudicate* and the discussions on these topics tend to be between people loudly claiming ''I read all 115 pages''. Many such individuals may well have read it but I have doubts about their understanding. Sensible people, at that point, throw themselves from the nearest bridge.
Some will argue that Suarez is treated differently because he has found himself in hot water before. They argue that we shouldn't judge him on yesterday's events but rather view it as part of a pattern of deplorable behaviour.
There is no doubt that he has sinned previously. His handball against Ghana. His biting in Holland. His racism. The Evra handshake. All of these mean that he is assumed to be guilty whenever he is accused. That is a shame and it shouldn't mean that in this case we should him adjudge him guilty when all evidence points to not proven.
The problem with narratives
The problem is Suarez is stuck in a narrative. He was vilified for a foul on Distin in the game against Everton earlier in the season. Similarly, Martinez brought up a foul he'd committed. When he fell into Terry - pushed by Ramires - many Chelsea fans screamed blue murder. Opposition managers know that blaming Suarez is an easy way to deflect attention away from their own team.
We are told that if he had done a ''Klose'' he may have taken another step towards rehabilitation in the English media's eyes. Perhaps. But narratives do matter.
Consider the incident when an Asian student suffered severe injuries in 2000 and Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate were charged with grievous bodily harm with intent and affray. Given the pair's press coverage over the years, it is astonishing that to think it was Bowyer was acquitted and Woodgate was found guilty of affray. The incident has stayed with Bowyer but Woodgate has swanned on regardless and unsullied. The narrative was that Bowyer was a scumbag even if the courts did not agree.
Consider that English football can overlook Roy Keane's deliberate assault on Alf-Inge Haaland and treat him as a legend or can appreciate Eric Cantona's genius despite the spitting, the assault of a fan, and the stamp on John Moncur. What will we say of Suarez in fifteen years time? That he was a genius. Or that he was a devil? Will he navigate the national mood like Cantona did? Where trangressions are overlooked because of the beauty of his play.
Liverpool fans may have a legitimate grievance that Suarez is picked upon to a greater degree than other players. That his minor indiscretions become back page news. That events like those of yesterday (which was likely not a deliberate handball) spark outrage and sees commentators live on TV call him a cheat. They demand that others be called cheats. They demand Bale be called a cheat. They - we - demand forlornly. All football players cheat but only some are labelled as cheats. C'est la vie.
The sad irony, of course, is that Suarez was probably innocent yesterday. Not that you'd know it given the views of much of the dead tree press. When it comes to Suarez, innocence and guilt no longer really matter. Liverpool fans will always defend him. The rest of the world will attack.
And we will all miss him when he goes to Spain.
RCM
7 comments:
Mansfield's chairman has double standards, had it been one of his players would he have expected him to put his hand up and say please Mr Referee It was hand ball? Would he **** .
As to Mr Champion, he is supposedly a professional and should know better and should also be sacked. He was biased towards Mansfield throughout the game, even more so after Suarez came on.
And talking about cheating Mr Champion thought that it was perfectly ok for Mansfield to have trained on an already water damaged pitch on Saturday destroying areas of the pitch where Liverpool's wingers would be running, no doubt hoping a liverpool player would be injured because of it, he got his wish with Wisdom sustaining an injury.
I do agree that at times Suarez gets too much stick from the media and opposing fans. But then again so did Ronaldo when he was at United. More often than not he was booed at away grounds and his only sin was going down easily. Its much easier to hate Suarez, who has been in the middle of a lot more controversy.
It would be weird if he didn't get booed by the opposing fans. During an age where you have access to all the goals/dives/tackles etc your reputation gets ahead of you and its obvious that when Suarez goes down he'll get booed for much of the match. You won't get a very clear view from the stands and if you know he is capable of that, then he'll get such treatment
The media on the other hand should have time to review the footage, make up their minds if there was much to discuss and then write what they think. Therefore I understand your disappointment of papers writing about this as if it were another reason to hate him. As you said - most players try to gain an advantage where they know they shouldn't get the decision.
For me the main source where I get the links to newspaper articles has the names of the authors behind the link, so for me its easy to just avoid writers who don't make too much sense. There are some who I avoid and who I think have a different agenda or just don't understand what they're talking about.
I think you're off interpreting the handball incident though. It might not be deliberate, but he couldn't have scored the goal if he hadn't handled it. I looked at the rules and didn't see it there, but in my opinion they interpret the rules so that if you gain an unfair advantage by handling, then its still a foul.
Your points about players bending the rules all the time are spot on. And it's one of the reasons why it is virtually impossible to referee games with the system we have at the moment.
Every time something happens on the pitch now the referees have to think twice about whether they've actually seen what they think they saw. Without replays and with only a split second to consult another human (who may have been similarly conned), how do we expect officials to get these calls right every time?
There is indeed a huge amount of hypocrisy over Suarez. For me, anything a player does deliberately to make the referee's job harder is cheating. You're hoping to force a mistake that will go in your favour to get an underhand advantage.
In that sense, it is as dishonest to "push the rules to the limit" by falling to the floor at the slightest contact as it is for twenty-stone rugby players to "go in hard" and wait for the referee to judge the line between fair tackle and GBH.
That said, I dislike Jon Champion's commentary style with a passion, but on this occasion I think the reaction from some Liverpool fans has been ridiculous. He was simply trying (all the way through) to play up the "little Mansfield taking on Goliath" narrative. Patronising? Yes. Annoying? Yes. But understandable. I'm not sure what else one should expect from ESPN. Should he criticise Mansfield for losing despite Liverpool being absolutely dire for 80% of the match?
Nobody complains when it's done for Liverpool re: beating AC Milan in the Champions League final. The patronising David-and-Goliath narrative that bled through the TV set in that second half and extra time was enough to make me regurgitate my dinner.
I thought Evra sold him a dummy on that handshake. I think Suarez's reactions are so quick that he might well have handled deliberately at the weekend. None of this matters much; he's shown such fine form this season that he'll be off to a richer club soon. If the big English clubs let him leave for Spain they're idiots.
@JuhanL
Your last paragraph is utterly bizarre, but I'm afraid extremely representative of the problems we face with fans attitude to the laws of the game.
You acknowledge that you have "read the rules and didn't see it there" but go on to say that in your "opinion" the rules are that if you gain an unfair advantage by handling then it's still a foul.
I'm sorry, but those are NOT the rules! Just because you wish it to be so, doesn't make it so.
If the referee judges that the handball was accidental, then from then on anything which occurs is completely irrelevant. You might not like it but that is the case. The referee is not allowed to wait and see what happens over the course of the next 10 seconds and then cancel any goals which are scored.
If in Suarez's mind he was sure that he had tried to move his arm out of the way but had been unable to due to the close proximity of the rebound, then he had done nothing wrong and the goal was valid, and he had nothing to repent or even apologise about. We might not like this situation, but I'm afraid those are the laws of the game.
The biggest complaint I hear about referees is that they are not consistent, yet if we really want consistency then referees must apply the laws of the game 100% - there is no room to "interpret the rules" to invent new laws as JuhanL suggests we do.
Therefore, if you read Law 12 as this blogger has done, and your view is that Suarez tried to move his arm out of the way of the "unexpected" ball, then Suarez did nothing wrong, the goal was valid, and Suarez had no moral requirement to inform the referee that the ball had touched his arm.
By the way, I am not a Liverpool fan, just a neutral observer in this case.
Anyone who saw MOTD will have heard that the fourth official was queried and he stated that the referee was of the view that the handball was not deliberate. End of.
Suarez is a superb player. He is also a liar and a cheat. He is by no means the only professional footballer with the aforementioned attributes.
Oh, and I'm a Liverpool supporter.
Its not in the rules, but its something the referees consider when making the decision. Or at least they should. If the player gets a clear advantage from using his hand, then it should raise doubt for the referee about whether the player did it on purpose.
Was it ball to hand or hand to ball? Both moved at a quick pace and the hand was in a weird position. It could've been to keep balance, but it could've been an instinctive wish to get a goalscoring chance.
Was it an unexpected ball or was it slow enough for him to instinctively move his arm there?
The position of the hand automatically doesn't make it a hand ball, but it does raise suspicion.
All in all its a question of whether he instinctively put his hand up to get a scoring chance(somewhat like he instinctively parried on the line against Ghana) or whether it was an accident when he tried to keep balance?
Its a tough decision for the referee and for me it was a handball.
Maybe I phrased my thoughts badly last night, I hope this makes more sense.
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