world cup thread

[Lissa]

Well, this ought to spark a lot of debate. Congratulations to La Celeste for pulling it out of the fire, and Ghana v. Uruguay was a hell of a game, but ... Uruguay just lost their beloved underdog status, for sure.

Speaking of Suarez' already-infamous handball, what does it *mean* to break the rules, in sport? In the sense of an illegal play for which there is a known consequence? To accept the penalty in exchange for the advantage of "cheating" in a crucial moment? Is that a good play? Is it cheating? Both? It is certainly not sportsmanlike. But, I think with football, that ship sailed long ago, with headbutts and diving and all sorts of rules jockeying.

Is this just business as usual, with Ghana losing to an unfortunate, but well-known, aspect of the rules of the game? Or were they "cheated" out of something which was rightfully theirs, despite Suarez having suffered the full prescribed penalty of his action? Where are the boundaries of "the game"? Or is this a kind of meta-game activity?

It seems to have potential implications for all sorts of competitive games, including the ones we play here. Is this somehow similar to using an exploit in WoW, or Diablo? It seems like "Anyone would have done the same" is contrary to our mentality. (But, then, we don't have refs, or world cups.)

-Jester

One thing that I did notice in the game about Ghana's players, they're quite the actors. During overtime, one Ghana player tried to get one of the Uraguay players a yellow card, or possibly a red card, by acting as if he had been hit in the throat. The replay clearly showed that the Uragian player never touched him, just beat him by getting infront of him to stop the ball and they were close enough that the Ghanan player made a melodramic fall and acted like he'd been hit in the neck (which the replay clearly shows the Uragian not bring any part of his body near the Ghanan player). Later, another Ghanan player tackled a Uragian players, but tried his damdest G(and faked injury as well) to try and get the Uragian player carded (when replay again showed the Ghanan actually initiating the tackle).

So I don't know at this point which I should really think is the better team. Uraguay that outplayed Ghana most of the match with one player that only thought about protecting the goal and cheating or the other team that used constant melodrama to get members of the other team carded instead of trying to outplay them.