Compare and contrast the recent incidents of Luis Suarez biting Giorgio Chiellini and Arjen Robben’s extra sauce as Rafael Marquez made little contact to earn a last-minute penalty.
Suarez denied before finally admitting what even the residents of Jupiter’s moon Callisto knew all along: he had bitten the left shoulder of the Italian.
He hadn’t “lost balance”, falling into the defender. He leapt with intent to leave his mark.
Robben admitted diving after Marquez made minimal contact. Contact was made but nothing eliciting the spreadeagled fall to earth we have come to expect from the cunning Dutchman.
So what does the continuum of bad behaviour look like? Where do the above pair fit into it?
In no way do I equate the above pair in severity or significance. But how is it that Suarez is still being courted by Barcelona, a club undeterred by the four-month ban imposed by FIFA, albeit it with a ‘bite clause’? How is it that, after a third such incident, he hasn’t been more harshly sanctioned?
The initial denial of the act and the diatribes and defences of Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez and the rather disproportionate and reflexive conspiracy-based behaviour of Diego Maradona leads me to ask: is football at this level still based on ‘whatever it takes’, and why isn’t FIFA more harsh on these incidents?
Both questions could well be levelled at Arjen Robben. At the point of contact, he clearly felt the need to accentuate the fall and win the crucial penalty to eliminate Mexico. That he admitted diving quite frankly doesn’t make the act better. He knew there was contact and that all the pundits would say so, and he could wear the exaggeration claims, for they aren’t new.
In only penalising Suarez four months, FIFA boxed themselves in. Giving Robben any time off after such a lenient sentence on Suarez would have attracted a furore of comparisons between the two, with the South American football community outraged that the two transgressions were somehow the same. The perception alone would have been damaging for FIFA, a self protective cabal with few equals.
Had FIFA hit Suarez with the full force they were entitled to (just a reminder: it was his third bite), they could have and should have sanctioned Robben also. That he and Suarez are world-class players should not excuse them from sinning nor FIFA from acting as a responsible parent.
The biggest irony is that Maradona’s 1986 ‘Hand of God’ is now on any YouTube clip of World Cup moments, and is not as harshly condemned as it should be due to the moment of absolute individual brilliance he produced three minutes later. Circumstance has shielded Maradona from permanent disgrace and many who witnessed both acts are too tired to worry about it anymore.
For an organisation that sets up its own pop-up law enforcement agency in the host country for the 31 days of the tournament, you would expect a harder line on the on-pitch behaviour.
For the good of the game? Bite me.
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