By Karl Lyimo

IF the truth be told, I didn’t watch most of the matches played in South Africa June 11-July 11 this year in the quadrennial 2010 FIFA World Cup Soccer Finals.

In fact, I stopped watching soccer as a regular rubberneck in the early 1970s, when I discovered, to my great horror, the cheating that goes on during matches… Referees taking bribes to favour the bribers in match results… Team managers ‘buying’ players in the opposing side to ‘throw’ matches… Players scoring goals with help of the ‘Hand of God’ infamy…Players taking a dive near goal to fool referees into awarding them a penalty kick; and so on, and so forth…

The latest such abomination was when the Uruguay player (Jersey No.9), Luis Suarez, ‘with malice aforethought’ (prosecutors pardon), handled the ball which was clearly on its merry way to the back of Uruguayan goal-net. Pictures show the Uruguayan goalkeeper already beaten by the kick – only to have Suarez, standing inside the goalmouth, play the ball with hands after it had ‘crossed’ (debatable) the goalline!

This was in the 118th minute of play on July 2... For all practical purposes, Uruguay played not with one goalkeeper, but two goalkeepers at that psychological moment – virtually denying Ghana the opportunity to qualify for the semifinal matches!

In the event, the referee banished Suarez from the pitch… Not that there was much more of the match left for the man to play!

Suarez also automatically missed (?) The Netherlands/Uruguay semifinal on July 6. No wonder Uruguay lost to the Dutch 2-3. If the fellow’d played then, who knows he wouldn’t have reverted to type, again stealing the match with his warped ‘Hand-of-God’ excuse – Hand of Satan, more likely! Habits die hard, you know!

The referee also awarded the Ghanaians a penalty following the Suarez handball. Although Asamoah Gyan sent the Uruguay goalkeeper goose-chasing the other way, his kick was wasted.

With both teams locked at a goal each, the game went into penalty shoots-out. Uruguay scored with four of their kicks, while Ghana managed to convert only two into goals.

At the end of the day, Suarez became a hero of sorts to his 3.5m compatriots, and a villain to 28m Ghanaians, 900m Africans and millions more world citizens who hold God in awe – and crooked, skewed or purblind soccer referees in contempt!

An obviously elated Suarez said he was proud of his handiwork: “It was worth being sent off in this way for, at that moment, there was no other choice; I’m cool, calm and collected…” (Reuters).

Suarez virtually carried his national team to the semi-finals in his hands.
 
“Yes, he stuck his hand out; but, is that cheating?” blathered his coach Oscar Tabarez in warped reasoning.

“I think it was instinctive… He was thrown out of the game; he cannot play the next match. There’re no consequences!” the coach waxed and waffled self-righteously.

Really? Callous as he is, the coach does not realize the grief his player caused Ghanaians in particular, but Africa and all lovers of Natural Justice in general.

…Tabarez: “When (Suarez) handled (the ball), he didn’t know Ghana’d miss the (ensuing) penalty. Is Suarez to blame for Ghana missing…?” Whew!

In ‘My Book of Things,’ that’s the most asinine pontificating ever heard this side of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (Jane Austen pardon!). Pure, unadulterated sophistry, I say.

Does the coach want us to believe that, had Suarez known Ghana’d fail to score through the penalty kick, he wouldn’t have crowned himself ‘goalkeeper extraordinary,’ illegally handling the ball – thus scuttling Ghana’s chances for victory in the dying minutes of extra time? Sheesh!

Fellow player Diego Forlani told it all when he said “Suarez’d saved the day” for the South Americans… “It’s a pity he was sent off. Instead of scoring, he saved one; he saved the game,” Forlani said somewhat patriotically.

Indeed, Suarez may’ve saved the match for the Uruguayans – albeit in a most deplorable way. But, then, not only did he fraudulently sink the Ghanaians in the latest edition of the World Soccer Cup. He also didn’t save Association Football, instead sending it to new lows!

FIFA needs to look into this. Where a player who isn’t the goalkeeper handles a ball which, hadn’t it been for the handling, would’ve gone inside the netting – and regardless of whether or not it’d crossed the goalline – this should count as a goal!

Hadn’t the player handled the ball, it’d’ve gone into the netting, counting as an ‘ordinary’ goal. After all, when a 'defending' player handles the ball which then goes inti the net, it is counted as a goal. On the other hand, when an 'attacking' player is seen by the ref to have handled the ball which then goes into the net, the 'goal' is disallowed.

What an anomalous mishmash, courtesy of FIFA cooks!

Denying the opposing team a goal in such (Suarez) circumstances is tantamount to defrauding the ‘opposition’ – especially considering that, for all practical purposes, the ‘offending’ team was playing with not one, but TWO goalkeepers!

Merely sending a player off the pitch – especially at the very tailend of a match – isn’t much of a punishment. Nor is barring him from the next match... After all, scores of otherwise excellent players who are crucial to their teams are routinely denied the next match or more through mundane injury and other Acts of God!

No, Sir! All this is so much like election-stealing, counting fake votes as valid and otherwise rigging the exercise so as to unfairly give victory to one side – no matter for what reason(s): corruption, incompetence, misplaced fanaticism or whatever. There isn’t much difference between the two. Cheers! [ This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ].