If you help your team win a match by deliberately breaking the rules, as Luis Suárez did last week, are you a hero or a cheat? I think a cheat, but let me say why.
Consider this famous trio of scenarios.
1. Thierry Henry, France v. Ireland, November 18, 2009.
Thierry Henry controls the ball with his hand (twice!) before scoring the goal that puts France into the World Cup finals and Ireland out. After the match, he is contrite, saying “I feel embarrassed at the way that we won and feel extremely sorry for the Irish,” adding that “the fairest solution would be to replay the game.”
2. Diego Maradona, Argentina v. England, June 22, 1986.
Maradona, who is 5 foot 5, goes up for a high ball with Peter Shilton, who is 6 foot 1. By a "miracle," Maradona gets to the ball first, causing it to fly over Shilton’s head into the goal. Replays reveal that he did not head but punched the ball into the net. After the match, an unrepentant Maradona says “it was not my hand: it was the Hand of God,” ensuring him the eternal loathing of English people everywhere. (Sorry, Diego.)
3. Luis Suárez, Uruguay v. Ghana, July 2, 2010
In the very last minute of extra time, Dominic Adiyiah hits a shot that is flying straight into the goal, taking an African nation into the World Cup semifinals for the first time ever... until Suárez punches it out. A penalty is given to Ghana, but it’s missed, and Uruguay go on to win the match. After the match, Suárez—who clearly wants to be loathed even more than Maradona—says "the hand of God now belongs to me."
I was watching this last match in a café in San Francisco, and was stunned when two people in the same café described Suárez’s action as “a great play.” Look, they said, Suárez knew that a penalty would be given and that he would be sent off, causing him to miss the next match; he sacrificed himself for his team. How noble!
The logic was of course faulty, since there’s no next match to miss if Suárez doesn’t stop the ball. Not to mention that Suárez may well have hoped not to be caught, just as Maradona was not caught. (Look at all the goals and offsides the referees missed in other matches this World Cup!) But I think the problem goes deeper than that.
The way I see it, there are two kinds of offense you can commit in a sport. The first kind is, so to speak, merely illegal; the second is also immoral. It’s not for nothing that Thierry Henry felt sheepish after committing his handball: he knew that it wasn’t just an infraction against the rules, like standing in an offside position; rather, it was a deliberate attempt to cheat the other side out of victory. For doing something like that, you can expect not just to be red-carded (if caught) but also to be vilified.
To see it differently is, I suspect, essentially to consider that winning is everything—that if X helps your team win, then X is ipso facto good. If that’s the case, however, then we should really be cheering on all those histrionic footballers who writhe on the ground in fake agony whenever someone breathes on them,
not to mention all the baseball stars who inject themselves with steroids,
or, I suppose, players like Roy Keane who deliberately set out to cause an opponent serious physical harm.
Perhaps in some sports winning really is everything. But football is supposed to be the beautiful game. You’re supposed to win by playing better, like the Spanish or—yes, let's admit it!—the elegant and impeccably honest German team of 2010. The aesthetic dimension of football causes the legal to be supplemented by the moral. It’s wrong to bring the game into disrepute, it’s wrong to seek victory at all costs—precisely because football is the sport whose ethos is joga bonito, a game of skill and grace and yes, why not, of honour.
The brilliant Ben Wolfson told me recently of an interest he’s been taking in what we might call "sanctioned illegality": even though it is officially a crime to exceed the speed limit by 5 mph, de facto, as we all know, it's not; at the end of a basketball game, similarly, players on the team that’s behind are not only not discouraged from committing fouls, they are positively required by their team to do so. You might think—as Luis Suárez, Diego Maradona, and my café-mates appear to—that throwing your fist at the ball at a crucial moment is just such a sanctioned illegality. I rather suspect it's not, and I also rather suspect that it's bad to think so. Cheats, of course, do prosper, but that’s not a reason for us to encourage them.
Except, perhaps, by the rationality that tells us that, when the cost of an action is sufficiently low as compared to the benefit to be derived, then of course one should perform the action and take one's lumps. (Call it the transactional or "cost of doing business" view, after the number of reprehensible businesses that don't mind getting fined for breaking the law as long as the illegal practices are nonetheless profitable.)
I for my part consider Suarez' action abominable and, as I put it elsewhere, "utterly low and disgusting", but, unusually for me, not for aesthetic reasons but rather for moral ones, and ones that have nothing to do with soccer's self-stylization as a beautiful game. (I am relatively insensitive to its beauty, or anyway any greater share of beauty it has as compared to other sports.) And it's not on aesthetic grounds that you can really make the necessary distinctions, anyway. If a goalkeeper can make a brilliant save, using his hands and arms, so too can any other player—can't he? It won't be less thrillingly executed for being against the rules.
It is the case, also, that while notorious floppers may not get cheered on for their showmanship (maybe they do, I don't know), there are people who positively expect their favored basketball team to intentionally foul members of the contralateral team if, say, the point gap is narrow and it will help run out the clock. (There are also people who think we should just admit drugs into baseball and bicycling, but it's hard to tell in that case if they say so primarily out of despair or for other reasons, though despair at a rule's unenforceability is likely to lead to willful violations fairly quickly.) The same sort of person (in fact, in at least one case known to me, the numerically identical person!) will also cheer Suarez. In at least some cases the following thought underlies the phenomena: "It's not that winning is everything; I wouldn't support, for instance, surreptitiously spiking a team's water with powerful emetics. But what you fail to understand is that this sort of thing is just part of the game. Look, it's right there in the rules: handball in the box, you get a red card. It's no different, in essence, from the rule that says if a player sends the ball goes past the ipsilateral goal line without a goal's having been scored, the contralateral team gets a corner kick, except it's cast in terms of what happens with a player rather than with a team. It's just how the game is played."
Someone who thinks in this fashion will deny that there is anything immoral in what Suarez did and aver that, on the contrary, he simply undertook to take part in a well-understood exchange. The problem with it is that, as far as I can see, this person is also committed to denying that there was anything illegal in what Suarez did, since the whole conception relies on rehabilitating handballs as legal-but-costly things you can do in soccer rather than illegal-thus-penalized things you can't (in some sense) do but which sometimes happen anyway.
(Which allows for a digression regarding Josh's initial illegal/immoral distinction. There are too many degrees of freedom in the examples used to illustrate it, since both different acts and (presumably) different states of mind are involved. It's not just that Suarez (literally) manipulated the ball, it's that he did so with, as it were, malice aforethought. This is unlikely to be the case with someone who just happens to wind up offside. But perhaps someone could be offside with mens rea,, and the ball might collide with someone's hand without his having brought this out for his own (team's) ends. Strict liability reigns in sports, as it has to, since the rules attempt to delimit what is and is not cric^H^H^H^Hsoccer, but are powerless to actually rule out that some state of affairs or other obtains. (The rules state that no one shall be in such-and-such a position—here is someone in such a position—a puzzling occurrence! This cannot be, regardless of what the player thinks he's up to.) It's the fact that Suarez broke a rule in order for his own gain that rankles. We know that these things happen, and that's too bad, but to bring them about on purpose?)
That, I think, is a really untenable position and quickly becomes incompatible with the possibility of doing anything at all that contravenes the rules. But regardless of its tenability or otherwise, and many people do seem to hold it, it also boils down to the position that one should break the rules when doing so is beneficial, and that's enough to make it and actions undertaken in accordance with it something to be disapproved of, regardless of any status claimed for soccer as being especially beautiful among sports.
Sports really do offer a microcosm of ethical life in a lot of ways; the realization that not only the moves legitimately part of the sport, but also the rules governing what moves are and what are not part of the sport can be regarded strategically is a powerful incentive no longer to adhere to the rules. (Parallels: the refs won't see/you have the ring of Gyges; the refs will see but your team will win/you get caught but you'll be rich anyway.) And a like temptation comes from witnessing frequent unpunished trespasses: why not just start regarding rule violations as essentially transactional if it seems that everyone's playing a different game anyway? Wouldn't you have to be some kind of naïve chump to do otherwise?
That sort of connection, I think, is why someone inclined to think that Suarez' action was bad is likely to be inclined to think also that it's bad not to think that it's bad.
Ben, very happy to hear we agree on the assessment of the Suarez case, even if not on all points of the rationale behind it. (Hope it was clear from my post that I was just borrowing your extremely helpful distinction rather than attributing to you a view on the basis of it; I rather had a hunch that you felt similarly about Suarez & co., but didn't want to presume...)
Your response is extremely rich, and I hope you don't mind if I just pick up on one of the points you make. You suggest that we can't be opposed to the handball on aesthetic grounds, since the aesthetic qualities of a save made by a non-goalkeeper are identical to the aesthetic qualities of the same save made by a goalkeeper. That's a strong challenge, and I'm not sure if I can meet it, but let me try by appealing (in Oulipian fashion) to the notion of constraint.
Arguably, part of what makes aesthetic objects and their parts beautiful is their ability to generate new, surprising, powerful forms within arbitrary constraints (the fourteen lines of a sonnet, the 100 yards of a soccer pitch). Take away the constraint, and the very same detail may all of a sudden be deprived of some of its beauty. One example would be a perfectly taken free-kick executed on the training field, with no defenders and no crowd noise.
I'm not sure I'm right, but could it be that the removal of constraints (by cheating) diminishes the aesthetic value of the actions performed?
(I considered, at the end of my previous comment, speculating on how long it would take before the attribution was changed from "ben wolfson" to "Ben Wolfson", but decided that mentioning the possibility might have a confounding effect; nevertheless, I now note that the hegemony of majusculonormativity continues unabated even in this virtual humanistic organ.)
I acknowledge the point! But as I can never simply acknowledge a point I press on. I was thinking of it this way: this particular save might exhibit grace, virtuosity, pleasing serendipity, or whatever else it is that one might delight in in a save—as this line, image, etc. might be striking, graceful, virtuosic, or exhibit any number of other relatively isolable qualities of the sort that sometimes lead these things to end up in dictionaries of quotations. In some cases the aesthetic qualities something has depend in a deep way on their having been produced in accord with some rule (the last lines of Alan Ansen's "A Fit of Something against Something" would not be very remarkable if it weren't for the fact that they consist solely of the six end-words of a sestina with gradually shorter stanzas). (Just as there are some things which might be perfectly good in themselves but which have no real home in the place in which they are, unfortunately, actually located.) And the game (verse) itself—its qualities surely derive at least in part from its rules and the conformity of its instances thereto. So if it's a matter of an aesthetic appreciation of the game, rather than the events in it, the point is much stronger. I suppose what you really want is an appreciation of the events-as-events-of-this-(kind-of-)game—regarding which I should perhaps also concede the point, especially insofar as it's the game that gives the opportunity for the events to exist in the first place.
I can think of two rejoinders, though, or perhaps one rejoinder which can falute high or low. I'm not sure what I really think of the high-falutin' version, mostly because I don't understand it.
(a), that falutes low: We don't demand rigorous, academic conformity, at least not all the time; we admit as a sonnet verses with trochees, and needn't even hold it against them. Even in the case of more formal forms some variation has been permitted without prejudice to the verse's character as whatever it is—a villanelle in which the repeating lines don't repeat exactly but have occasional changeups. (Though to the extent that the point of the form is to display one's powers within it, such things will be, I imagine, less acceptable.) Indeed, these deviations can even be significant, though perhaps in would wrong to try to export that back to a game. At any rate: something which admittedly sins against the rules of the form can nevertheless redound to the object's aesthetic credit, perhaps in the sinning, perhaps merely despite it; why not think that the, say, audacity of a handball, the creativity exhibited in some other rule-breaking, if it is also executed virtuosically, gracefully, with style, etc., is aesthetically appreciable not only in itself but also as appearing in a game of a certain sort? (Without which it would after all not be audacious, and as long as it doesn't positively corrode the game.)
(b), that falutes high, or, the judolipo flip: "when a system of constraints is established, there must also be anticonstraint within it", says Perec; "it must, as they say, 'creak' a bit; it must not be completely coherent; there must be a clinamen". "For Oulipians", says Mathews, "the clinamen is a deviation from the strict consequences of a restriction. It is often justified on aesthetic grounds: resorting to it improves the results". (I know myself to be on shaky ground here in that I know there are clinamen-related oulipian practices and theorizations that are significantly more complex that any of that, but I don't actually know much about them.) But: we not only can permit but must have (so the thought would go) some rule-breaking going on. It is a necessity for—something. Someone get Marjorie Perloff on the horn. Another reason I'm shakier here is that I'm not sure if the clinamen is supposed to have an even partially metaphysical involvement in constraint-based productions, or if it's more a matter of the creator's, say, assertion of independence from mere governance by rules, which naturally manifests itself in occasionally not adhering to them. In the latter case it wouldn't really work with the behavior of an individual player in a game, though that could perhaps be reasonably analogized to the Lucretian clinamen.
Weep if you want to, Ben, but you're never getting those lower-case letters back.
sez you.
An interesting discussion! Can I weigh in with some law-related observations?
1. What's all the moral fuss about? There is a distinction between the legal and moral in the real world (parking violations and adultery being the two most popular examples of where these come apart), and then there is a distinction between the rules of soccer and something else, but is this something morality? These aren't bad people we are talking about, they are bad players because they played badly. That is, the malice/mental state issue seems somewhat misplaced to me. But then what kind of norm are you interested in if it's not legal or moral?
2. Take for example the problem of the efficient breach in contact law: what's wrong if both parties come out better off? (I know this isn't what happened with Ghana, but let's start here). According to some legal scholars, EB can make the body of contract law on the whole worse (less elegant, less beautiful or less legitimate let's say), and this matters. But if we analogize this breach to the committing of a foul, why should it matter to the whole in soccer and not in basketball? What accounts for the difference?
3. To stretch the jurisprudential analogy a bit farther, one idea about how to answer the question is this: there exist customary norms (my offering in place of Ben's "sanctioned illegality") that evolve over time within international law (and, as at least five Justices would argue, in American Constitutional law) which import further legitimacy to that body of law by filling in gaps to the black letter and dealing with difficult realities (like enforcing speed limits on the lighter side, or Nuremberg on the darker). So let's assume that there are different customary norms in place for each "sport culture" (Am I talking about cultures among sports or teams? -- both, but let's begin with the former). Basketball has a different custom regarding fouling than does soccer, as Josh points out, but this doesn't make it an any less beautiful a game: Even if you are fouled, if you don't make your free throws (I can hear my high school coach saying) you don't deserve to win. (And why not place the honor onus here?)
So why don't we blame Ghana for not making its penalty kick? Maybe the structure is set up in such a way that the game of soccer (necessarily?) doesn't work as well if these customs aren't respected (i.e. maybe a penalty kick is lot harder to make -- but then NBA players miss free throws all the time). However, the game of basketball does work with the fouling/free-throw custom, and these customs' functions have further consequences for what we appreciate about each game aesthetically. On the other hand, maybe soccer functions just as well with the hand of god, and it's customary to soccer, or rather, to a certain brand of soccer, to use the Hand of God on occasion. That is, perhaps different teams are playing at least two different games with different customs under the heading of soccer. (Josh might reply that this is at the very least taking advantage of an unfair inconsistency and majority norms should govern. I might add that this hand-of-god-custom is apparently catching on, so watch out).
4. But is this really the source of the charming "moral" indignation we see at sporting events? "Your soccer is less beautiful than English/German soccer?" (and "we lost," because it's arguably a better game if you beat the evil and not just the worse team*). Or is Josh's claim really more serious: "Soccer will become less beautiful if you continue to play with these customs" ... Or better yet, is the indignation contained in someone's yelling "cheater" an artifact that soccer indeed has over basketball? The evil deeds that matter in soccer are, as I understand them, for the most part contained within the game itself (rather than scandals outside of it), and having Suárez as your enemy because he played ugly is a beautiful thing.