One of the most agonisingly blatant incidents of football chicanery in the history of the game was seen by millions in the Uruguay -v- Ghana World Cup quarter-final last night. If you didn't see it then a quick summary: a closely fought match has been 1-1 for more than an hour, extra time is about to run out, but Ghana have the Uruguay goal under siege. A shot is made from very close range and it's bang on target... but a player named Luis Suarez fends the ball away with his hands. The referee immediately sends Suarez off, and a penalty is awarded. But Ghana miss, time is up, and Uruguay win the resulting penalty shoot-out.
Looking at it from the point of view of the defender, he did the right thing. He sacrificed himself for his team, to keep their hopes alive. He gambled that maybe the penalty that was sure to be awarded would be missed... and he was proved correct to do so.
In rugby football if a try is only prevented because of a penalisable offence the attacking team is awarded what's called a penalty try. I don't know when this rule originated but I can remember it being enforced 30 years ago and it surely goes back further than that. The rules of football should be changed in the same way: if the ball is clearly heading towards the target but a goal is prevented by breaking the rules then a penalty goal should be awarded (not just a penalty kick). The LBW rule in cricket has a similar logic.
Since you can't change the rules retrospectively Uruguay should be disqualified: it is the only morally correct thing to do. But this will NOT happen. Uruguay will go on to play the Netherlands and, who knows, if the Dutch have one of their off-days (and they have a long history of these) Uruguay could get as far as the final. The world will see confirmed in front of their eyes that those who cheat can prosper enormously by doing so (even if they do get their wrists slapped).
Cheating is brushed aside as "all part of the game": when, for example, erstwhile England captain John Terry jumps for the ball with his elbows flailing wildly. This happens every time he goes for a header. He is the picture of innocence should an opponent happen to be knocked flying or if the referee dares challenge him, but they very seldom do, and so he carries on doing it. Suarez's team-mate Diego Forlan (as Aryan a Uruguayan as I have ever seen) is no stranger to the penalty-winning dive in the box, and how many feigned injuries have we seen in this World Cup alone?
In 2003 Robert Pires dives and earns a penalty for Arsenal who are 1-0 and struggling against Portsmouth. They get the goal and it ends 1-1 and they go on to be unbeaten all season. Yes, I'm still bitter about it.
It's nauseating that the most prominent and popular sport in the modern world tolerates cheating, but it's no surprise: football is the microcosm of the larger (global) society which it takes place within. Nearly a century ago
Antonio Gramsci said "Football is a model of individualistic society. It demands initiative, competition and conflict. But it is regulated by the unwritten rule of fair play." (Paraphrase from
Football and Scopone, an essay of 1918,
scopone being a popular card game played in fours, two pairs competing, in Italian pubs.)
At the time Gramsci wrote this he fervently believed that Italy, and the world, could be transformed into a Communist society through the free exchange of ideas: in the battle of ideologies the morally correct view could prevail, and the old ideas would wither away. Not many years later, as part of a crack-down ordered by Mussolini, the state prosecutor said that Gramsci's brain should be stopped from functioning for twenty years. It only took eight years of his twenty year sentence for poor Gramsci to be stopped from "functioning" altogether. And we know how history has played out since then.
The global society which football models is one which tolerates charismatic cheats, thieves, and liars. It's one which rewards the bosses of failing businesses with nice new jobs in the business which takes over what's left (while the minions join the dole queue). One which says that the only way to encourage banks to lend, and to kick start the sclerotic economy, is to guarantee their loans with tax revenues. And when the bankers agree to defer their fat bonuses for a year oh how grateful we're all supposed to be. One which says that in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy we must cut one quarter from health, education, social care....
It shouldn't be allowed to carry on. But it does. Uruguay shouldn't be allowed to carry on in this World Cup. But they will.
The new-ish Con-Dem 
