Maybe it's a good idea for keepers to use a random number generator to determine which direction they jump to. That should allow them to stay put more times than they did.
I guess 1)it has always been that way and 2)players would regularly fake an injury (especially with less than half an hour remaining and with the many subs you are allowed nowadays) to get substituted.
Every other foul can be taken by whomever, penalties are no different.
In variations of the sport, such as sand soccer (which has world championships, etc.) the fouled player takes the kick.
Thanks. Gyan admits that he cried all night after that game. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8234635/Asamoah-Gyan-admits-cried-missing-penalty-Ghanas-World-Cup-defeat-Uruguay-2010.html.
Compounded by the fact the PEN was awarded for arguably the single worst example of sportsmanship I can think of - Saurez sticking his hand up to deliberately deflect the ball over the bar. Not to mention he crowed about it afterward with no shred of decency. As a Liverpool fan I loved watching his skills but man was he ever a dickhead
99 out of 100 folks I played with make the Suarez play in those circumstances. The other wasn't trying to win.
Another reason: ref has to remember who touches the ball last, if there‘s a hand involved.
Generally, at least under the rules I played, handballs are different. Anyone can take that. I'm talking about when a player was fouled.
Interesting. Question 2: why do you say this? People take fouls/penalties all the time in sports if it gives them an advantage. I don't know if I can think of an appropriate analogy given the importance of a goal in soccer, but in basketball, people foul all of the time to make people earn it at the stripe, even in super close games at the end.
Yeah, we were all celebrating when Acosta committed a tactical foul on Bale that almost certainly prevented a game winning goal for Wales, with the consensus that it was a savvy play, but when you get down to it the plays really seems fairly similar. Both were intentional violations of the rules of the game that were calculated to prevent a late, game winning goal by prohibited means. Sure, a handball feels a bit, I don’t know, sleazier, maybe, than a regular foul? And Suarez was at a later stage and there was more certainty about the Suarez play stopping a goal, but the Suarez play also was punished more severely with a red and a penalty kick, whereas the Acosta play drew a fairly meaningless yellow. Suarez is also an easier target to drag through the mud, given the rest of his actions throughout the years, but the specific rage directed at him for that play seems a little bit of the “our heroic adventurers/their brutish invaders” meme.
I'm a surprised at such harsh comments toward the Suarez play. Suarez's character aside (which could be the bigger issue), it was a game saving play and I thought well within the bounds of sportsmanship. I don't see what makes it shameful. Suarez did what he had to do to put his team in the best position to win. He paid the price - he got an immediate red and missed the next match, if I remember correctly.
Yeah, the Suarez situation was kind of a perfect storm that I think makes it seem especially unsporting when you take all the circumstance into account. It was late in the game so the consequence of the red card was not felt. Ghana missed the penalty. And then Ghana lost in penalties. But Suarez and Uruguay did pay a price -- Suarez was lost for the semifinals and they lost the game.
Yeah, I don't agree with this at all. There's no morality here. Stealing is wrong. We punish it because we want to stop it and don't really have a choice.
I genuinely appreciate your post and find you to be one of the most thoughtful posters I come across on SoSH.
Sports' rules are generally designed for 2 things:
I can appreciate where those views come from, especially when put like that. It's not that far from the yiddish chutzpah, and there are cultural glorifications of the master system-manipulator in English and American cultural heritage too. But the reason Americans so viscerally react against flopping in global football, and went up in arms over the importation of flopping to NBA basketball when Vlade Divac and others brought it over (to the point where it has gone dramatically down after a refereeing point of emphasis), is because of this general cultural revulsion at intentional violation - at cheating. Our sporting mores generally go: Respect for the game, and for your opponent, must come before your desire to win. To win by so blatantly disrespecting the game means you win without honor.
I don't think I disagree with some of this from an aspirational point of view. It's just very hard to distinguish between sporting and unsporting.
This is very much a difference of opinion: almost everyone I know views “if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying” as the same kind of self-motivated pseudo-justification as “snitches get stitches”.
Sports administrators generally hate giving refs arbitrary powers like that. That being said, in hockey if you throw your stick at the pick (in an empty net scenario for example) they can award a goal.
"if you aren't cheating, you aren't trying" can be a maxim for everyone who wants to elevate winning above sportsmanship. But that's just another way of saying that sportsmanship doesn't matter, or is of no consequence to you. If you can fool the referee, if you can somehow make a mockery out of the game in order to win, that's a good thing in the eyes of the people who repeat that phrase. Take that as far as you can possibly take it, right? The rules are no constraint except insofar as they might result in you getting punished. But to people do who value sportsmanship - who think that the nature of an athletic or gaming contest ought to be to find out who has the better skill in playing it, not in who can best deceive others - that idea is anathema to the whole reason we watch sports.
Players intentionally break the rules of the sport they play all the time--breakaway foul in basketball, DB beat by a WR so he grabs him, etc.
I think if folks think that kind of cheating is the same as the on-field play we are talking about then we're likely not going to find common ground. Not saying you are wrong, just saying that *to me* those are vastly different things.
I've given my personal opinion at length, but to answer this as a soccer question,
Thanks for your very thought-provoking posts on the subject. I'm curious - are there any other plays in other sports where breaking the rules of play you would consider rising to the same level as blocking a shot with one's hands in soccer?
Heres one .. DB intercepts a pass and is charging free and clear down the sideline and about to score a Super Bowl winning TD in overtime. Opposing player (or coach) ON THE SIDELINES jumps out and trips him. I think this has actually happened (not in the SB) .. maybe in college football?
Here's one that I think tests the principle. One of the problems with defensive penalties in football is that other than a single untimed down the team that is fouled doesn't get the time back. Combined with the fact that you can never put a team closer to the end zone than the first yard line on PI (or half the distance for other penalties) makes it so that you can really game things. If a team without time outs down by three is trying to score a TD from the one yard line with 10 seconds left, there's incentive to pull down every receiver and otherwise blatantly commit penalties. You put them in position where they are no better off and now have less time and so maybe have to kick.
Great post. This is my favorite macro discussion in sports.
This hits the nail on the head to me and I think demonstrates why your perspective is not a reasonable expectation for the mentality of a professional athlete. There are no multi million dollar contracts given or fame gained in your ultimate frisbee league (to be fair, I'm guessing). If there were, I suspect players trying to "game the rules" would inevitably pop up. I don't think you are alone in this and I don't think you are wrong to aspire to place sportsmanship over winning. I just don't think we can expect professional athletes to behave that way. And as to Suarez, I don't think it was bad sportsmanship to violate the rules of the game on the field - without hurting anyone - when it improved his team's chances to win.
In soccer the rule is "you can't play the ball with your hands." In baseball the rule is "pitcher must throw strikes." Not abiding by those rules leads to negative consequences. I'm not convinced that playing the ball with your hands is, generally speaking, more objectionable than intentionally walking a hitter. I accept that intentional walks in baseball have culturally become commonplace whereas playing the ball with your hands has not (because there is almost no advantage EXCEPT a Suarez-like situation), and therefore the cultural aspect may dictate that one is more objectionable than the other. But from a strict rules perspective, they seem analogous to me (i.e., play this way on the field or face the negative consequences).
Ghana missing the penalty is what spurred this discussion. The game was still being decided on the athletic ability of the participants. And I hope we agree that what Suarez did and what Lance Armstrong did are not analogous.
I mean, this strikes me as a little fatalistic. The dark arts are alive and well in soccer and as far as I can tell it is as popular as ever. NFL football is a create your own adventure each week about what is a catch, a hold, a pass interference, etc., and yet we accept the results each week as adequately determining who wins and loses the game to the tune of billions of dollars.
What do you mean by, it doesn't help anyone to do that? If the ref had that power in soccer, we wouldn't be discussing the Suarez play today.
I think he meant that fouling a breakaway goal in Hockey wouldn't help the defensive team, so there is no point in discussing it.
Point of clarification on the NFL, I am pretty sure there is a rule that if you do something like this twice in a row the ref can award a TD or something like that. I forget the exact rule. @CFB_Rules ?
I don't think this quite works because non-players going on the field is a big no-no in every sport.
They were all set to add that to the laws in 2018 and then for some reason did not and there's not much discussion of why when googling. It was to be called a "penalty goal." In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 game there were calls for it, but Blatter was opposed. He said something about "either the ball is in the goal or it isn't." Whether this carried over into the 2018 discussion is unclear.
