The limitations of the referee were a part of the sport, which was always about humans and stories, not the mechanical application of rules.
That's why we are here once again remembering the memorable moment that the Hand of God goal was.
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Exactly right. Football grew to be what it was from the slums in Latin America. It's always been human, analog, with all the faults this may have - perfect in its imperfection. If you've grown up watching the game, many of the memories are about some poor (intentional or not) calls -- offsides that weren't, handballs that were let to pass, penalties that weren't called, etc. And we still talk about these moments (or even still argue about them) at social gatherings and coffee shops. That's part of the appeal of the game. Celebrating the humanity of it, with all its mishaps. Similar to e.g. a vinyl record vs a lossless FLAC multi-channel recording - no denying the latter is superior, but the former has bugs (imperfections) that for some are features. Sadly, with more and more $$ being poured into the game (at least for big leagues like UEFA CL), we've lost some of this "analog-ness" of the sport. You gain something by losing something else.
I can get that analog simile... but not the toleration of cheating. Wasn't the 'hand of God' cheating? He knew he hand-balled and he didn't own up to it. To me that's such a grave betrayal of sportsmanship. Everyone else seems to see it as a bit of a joke? Why play at all if you're going to be dishonest? Seems like if we're going to tolerate that the whole thing is corrupt and rotten and has no honour.
It’s a fine line, for sure. Cheating is considered by some to be part of the game, too. The referee is there to prevent cheating, and without VAR they are liable to fail. We do not tolerate cheating, but but we can not prevent all forms of it, only punish it when it is uncovered with some certainty.
The litmus test for somebody’s football beliefs, of this generation at least, was the Luis Suarez handball against Ghana at WC 2010.
Was Suarez justified in volleyball-spiking the shot out of the net? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDpx9GGH79I
When I was younger, I was bitter and thought it wasn’t fair. But I’ve come around. Handballs are part of the game. The punishment in that circumstance is a red card and a multiple game suspension. Most people would have done the same thing in his boots. If you want to remove cheating, you’d have to ban people from the sport. But I think people would prefer to have controversy than to have a synthetically clean game.
(Where I draw the line is tackling with intent to injure, or intentionally escalating physically dangerous situations. That is never OK.)
People are gradually trying to make the game more binary. They tried to make the handball rule more black and white this season, and many players and most fans agree it’s a regression.
Luis Suarez's move was like sacrificing a queen in chess. He used his hand and accepted his red card.
"Cheating" would be being on steroids or bribing the ref or something like that.
I dunno, I can do without Robben's no era penal. 2x. Vs Mexico and Costa Rica in successive games.
And Panama's ghost goal keeping USA out of the last World Cup. Ridiculous. I thought they at least had goal line sensors.
The context matters. At the time it felt justified given the violence of England against Argentina.
Because it is part of the game, hate it or love it. English players and fan where pissed, but Maradona got away with it, so respect. All of them would have done the same if they knew they could get away with it. Especially in such a big game.
Plus, it's just a game, nobody died. And it's fun to watch how a very small player beat a giant keeper through creativity and boldness.
People said the same thing about instant (and not instant) replays
I can’t see how this isn’t celebrating dishonesty and unsportsmanship - both things that undermine sport not make it.
You are missing the point. Football is not just a sport. It is not made of cold analysis and rules.
As Sartre said: Il calcio è una metafora della vita. Football is a metaphor of life, it is arduous, hard, difficult, full of suffering with redeeming glory. Miracles are possible, and there is always time.
I'm not sure why Sartre is quoted in Italian here, but this seems to be a spurious quote all the same. I could only find two sources with a version of that quote in French and neither had a citation of the original source. In fact, the only real quote from him I could find on soccer was «Au football, tout est compliqué par la présence de l'équipe adverse» ("In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the other team.").
Interestingly, during my search I found an apt quote for this discussion from another 20th century French philosopher. Camus once said «Ce que je sais de la morale, c'est au football que je le dois» ("What I know about morality, I owe to football"). I guess he would be missing the point here too.
Look that first goal broke my heart.
However, real football has uncertainty, it has games where you were robbed. Games where the referee blow the whistle a fraction before the ball hits the net (no goal). When a goal is given you can celebrate, especially in a live match. Now VAR robs something of the game. The second goal would not have happened with the first goal being ruled against. Not driven the next England side to semi-final to almost avenge the 1st goal. VAR is terrible. Football without VAR is like live - full of injustice, full of revenge, full off real emotions.
Why is that more true for football than it would be for, say, tennis, where hawkeye has been in operation for and widely accepted for years?
The rules of Tennis are much more discrete and mechanical than the rules of football.
For some examples, see the handball rule definition, the definition of when a penalty should be given when a foul occurs near the edge of the box, and the body parts that render an attacking player “offside”. What constitutes a foul vs a fair tackle, especially during set pieces. And, at what point in time should one draw the offside lines?
This year they’ve made enforcement of offsides extremely arbitrary, overturning goals by a distance smaller than the margin of error for the technology. The lines are drawn from players armpits. Armpits are a continuous body feature, and different humans have different dimensions.
In short, two good referees can review an identical event from omnipotent angles, and reasonably come to divergent conclusions.