The Cheating that Cheating Created

Good morning class. Footie 101 is now in session.

Our first lecture generated healthy debate and feedback – so much so that I need to acknowledge the copy editing offered by former colleagues in the daily newspaper business… They have no lives.

Next, I want to give a big up to the “First Five” followers of The Footie Professor blog: Bavarian JAM, Sports Groove (AKA Gray Matters), Tomas “The Face,” Carl “The Truth,” and Jersey James. I’d like to make special mention of James, who’s also started blogging at: http://crazyburnleytalk.blogspot.com/. I suspect we’ll be podcasting together in the near future and it promises to be most entertaining. Meanwhile, be sure to check him out and learn the origins of his blog name… crazy, just like him.

Now, onto business. I promised to explore the need for rules in the beautiful game, but even before I could get the first words out, I’ve been chastised by footie fans from America de Sud, who claim I’m imposing American Protestantism onto a sport that’s always involved cheating. Fair enough on the imperialism… but if you want to point fingers at a cheating sport, point them at baseball. From origins to modern day, the “National Pastime” has been about, involved, and celebrated cheating. In the baseball arms race, pitchers spit on, oil, and file the balls, while batters cork and grease their bludgeoning instrument. What else would you expect from a country that copied cricket from the Brits, rebranded it baseball, and then claimed they created a sport from scratch. Oh yes, baseball is Americanized cricket! And to this day, Americans love a cheater, so long as the cheater doesn’t get caught – see Jesse James, John Dillinger, and Mark McGwire.

But in football that degree of cheating – especially on the world’s stage – was a novelty. That changed in 1986 when our old friend Diego Maradona illegally used his “Hand of God” to score a goal that advanced Argentina in the World Cup. I don’t intend to beat up on Diego every blog post, but after that incident, such blatant acts of disrespect for the rules became the norm. Sure, there had been kidnappings, and ringers, and hatchet jobs before Diego, but they tended to be done on the club level and not with the world watching LIVE.

But ever since the dead-beat-dad, recovering drug addict, and raving egomaniac that is Diego punched the ball into the English net, cheating has increasingly become regularized throughout the game. Look no further than the curious case of Thierry Henry. Just last year, the French striker double dutched the ball to beat Ireland and claim the last European qualifying spot for this World Cup. Henry, who is universally known as a sportsman’s sportsman, admitted the transgression afterwards, but a true sportsman would have told the referee, or arranged for Ireland to even the score. It’s been done before! So France is in the 2010 World Cup because Henry cheated and the referees either let it happen, or weren’t empowered to correct it.

Just the other day, we learned that North Korea – making its first World Cup appearance in generations – had been caught cheating, and will actually be punished. Apparently, diminutive dictator Kim Jong-il – that’s really who’s coaching the team – tried to slide an extra striker into the squad as a third goal keeper. FIFA found out and ruled the player will only be allowed to play as a keeper. I suspect FIFA was more concerned that singer Bobby Womack was masquerading as Kim Jong-il, and stepped in to keep old R&B singers from exerting undue influence over football.

Here, the rules were allowed to work. But most often they don’t. Case-in-point, the most common rule that’s never followed is the offside’s rule. This rule, enacted to promote more open play, states if the attacking team plays the ball to a player that is behind the last defender, it’s a foul pass. But when it’s too close to call; the rule stipulates favor for the attacking player. Unfortunately, referees always call the attacking player offside. More troubling to my righteous Yankee sensibility is the outright disdain FIFA has for using any technology to affirm whether goals are actually scored. The fundamental rule of the game is whether the ball crosses the goal line. And if FIFA doesn’t do everything in its power to ensure that scored goals are goals, then what’s the point in having rules in the first place? They seem to like things the way they are simply because that’s the way they are – the worst reason to stave off the eventual tide of modernization.

Purists (read, stuck in the bronze age) will say “if we get all the calls right, there won’t be anything to talk about after the match.” What games are these troglodytes watching? Every match I’ve seen is entertaining - with the exception of any final involving the Italian national team, or an Italian club. There was even plenty to talk about after the snore fest final of 2003 between AC Milan and Juventus. Despite the anti-football on display, seven years later, I’m still talking about how mind-numbingly dreary it was! So FIFA needs to start enforcing its existing rules more thoroughly and look to strengthen all its rules through more exact tools.

Enough of that… time for a quick round-up of news. Everyone is crying in their beer about all the injuries being suffered by important players in the build-up to the World Cup. I’ll exclude Brazil from this beer crying, because the Brazilian authorities were wise enough to suspend the import tax on beer cans for the World Cup. But yesterday, two big players were ruled out of the tournament through injury, a week before it all kicks off. England captain Rio Ferdinand busted his knee in training trying to imitate previous captain John Terry’s pelvic gyrations with former teammate Wayne Bridge’s baby-momma. Meanwhile, Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba accused a Japanese player of breaking his elbow yesterday during a friendly (2-0 Ivory Coast). This just in: Drogba has recanted his accusation, and is now admitting that he slipped on a field slick of Jheri Curl activator tossed to him from the crowd by the ghost of Michael Essien.

The laundry list of crocked players began nearly a year ago with Essien, who’s not been seen since Jose Mourinho walked him around Stamford Bridge on a leash. He was followed by former England captain David Beckam, German captain Michael Ballack, and today Nigeria's rampaging midfield rhino John Obi Mikel. All GONE! Could the anxiety get any more anxietous? Why yes…. Yes it can. With mere days before South Africa and Mexico get it on in the opening match, the USA’s much heralded striker Jozy Altidore has sprained his ankle and is “day-to-day.” Meanwhile Chilean striker Humberto Suazo, Italian midfielder Andrea Pirlo, and Brazilian goalkeeper Julio Cesar have all been knocked up and are sweating it out to make the final like Matthew Modine trying to make weight in “Vision Quest.” Not to fear class, it’s all normal. Some stars always miss the big dance through injury, but the pageantry, tension and drama remain absolutely cosmic.

In other news, the roaring train wreck that is Raymond Domenech has once again shown that one man can take a finely tuned machine and turn it into a porous accordion. Yesterday’s evidence was France being defeated 1-0 in a friendly by a China side that couldn’t have scored in “Boxing Helena.” French coach Domenech inherited a French national team that had won a World Cup (98) and European Cup (2000). Instead of fine-tuning the team, he and completely deconstructed any semblance of competitiveness it had. For the past decade this team (player-for-player) has been as good or better as any team in the world, but has massively underachieved. Skeptics will point out that France was in the 2006 World Cup final with Italy. But the reality is that the immensely talented Les Bleus could have been in every World Cup and Euro final of the past decade. And it is Domenech who repeatedly ruined their chances. Even French tennis fans know it! Mercifully, he’s agreed to step down…. but only after scuttling this year's French World Cup campaign. Sack Le Bleus!

Lastly, here’s a little tidbit that ought to put fire in belly of Jozy and the US Footiecats. Irate Liverpool FC fans burned an American flag yesterday in protest of American owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks firing marginally popular manager Rafa Benitez. Now Rafa has won the “Scousers” a UEFA Champions League and even got them back to the final in a losing effort. But he’s never won the English Premierships, and that’s really what the once dominant Liverpool faithful crave. Worse, after spending loads of cash on players for the past few years, Liverpool haven’t even qualified for next season’s Champions League. Fans often called for Rafa’s head. Well yesterday the Yank owners delivered it. And how were they thanked? Can you say US embassy in Tehran, 1980! Hmmph! Methinks the Limeys doth protest too much!

But before I start singing the national anthem and dressing like Don King, it’s time to end this class and leave you with this meaty football anecdote:

In 2006, Romanian football club UT Arad demanded a refund after having bought a player for a transfer fee of 15 kilos of pork sausages. Defender Marius Cioara retired a day later saying he could not face any more sausage related taunts at his expense. After the deal a spokesman for his new team Regal Hornia confirmed: “We gave up the team's sausage allowance for a week to secure him, but we are confident it will be worth it.” A day after the deal was leaked to the media, Cioara announced he was giving up football and had decided to flee the country. “I have decided to go to Spain where I have got a job on a farm,” he said. Making sausage, no doubt.

CLASS DISMISSED