luis suarez is incapable of sportsmanship; he undermines everything that sport is all about. he is a cheat, a flagrant cheat. what he did against ghana is repulsive - not just the action of the handball itself, but the fact that he basked in it via the celebration and his comments about it. the fact that it's 2014 is not the point. moyes told the truth about diving (a truth that is universally accepted), and he called out the league's prime example of what is simply a cheap tactic...and what does suarez do - he goes for some absurd, insane response that only a true piece of shit could conjure up. the guy fucking bites people...what's the end game in that? what kind of man bites somebody? and he acts as if he's completely unaware of why it's wrong.

he's a truly skilled player and has world class talent, but we've seen play as good as his, we've seen play better than his. he's not unique in his talent, he's certainly unique in his uglier actions because i've never seen someone take it to such an extreme level on such a consistent basis. he's completely expendable to the sport, and i wish that he had knees worse than van basten's. if karma truly played some part in what happened to spain over the last seven days as pink said, i can't wait to see what's in store for luis suarez...that, more than his skill, will be what keeps me watching. fuck that dude.

how? that doesn't line up with any of your line of thinking that i've seen you share on this forum, pete.

i just don't understand how you don't see a problem with someone flagrantly cheating someone in the realm of sport.

It is definitely cheating because it turns a goal into a smaller mathematical probability, and that shouldn't happen. Most annoying moment of the last world cup, probably.

A bit upset that I am not going to be able to see the France game tomorrow, since I'm working, but I'll be wearing my jersey at work and hopefully that will bring some luck.

aw damn that sucks. france and italy are the two teams that have looked great that no one is talking about.

kosh you are one negative dude for wishing ill towards a person that has absolutely no relation to you. To actually wish a person to legitimately be hurt is something I really can't understand.

Also, what Suarez did against Ghana was blatantly use his hand and get sent off for it. It's not like he did something and got away with it. I see it similar to a defender bringing down a striker who's on his way to scoring. He did something wrong, obviously, but he got punished for it with the red card. I don't even get where morality comes from there. Diving and theatrics is definitely a billion times worse.

yeah kosh stop being a suar loser

Tomorrow's slate of games looks a bit dull. Need USA/Portugal to get here so I can stop slowly tricking myself into believing we could win.

Because my point being that I was saying if Japan scored first and Greece had to come out of their shell it was likely over. My suspiscion (confirmed looking at your post) is that Barca was trying to come back for a bunch of the time driving possession. The principle is the same as hockey. When you're playing catchup possession tends to increase

Maybe we should evaluate France when they don't play one of the weakest teams, who also were a man down.

I have zero time for the argument that "cheating" in the form of a handball is repulsive and I'm shocked that any fan of American sports can take such a position

It is no different from a guy covering a puck in the crease (or even better a guy hauling someone down on a breakaway in hockey), a deliberate foul in basketball, or a deliberate pass interference penalty. There is an established penalty for those things and you agree to take it when you cheat (and in his case it is ejection plus penalty kick which is a huge sanction appropriate to the opportunity denied). I do not accept that he should just let the goal in as I wouldn't accept it in these other circumstances. The only penalties I view as worthy of opprobrium are those that are unsafe or carry greater injury potential.

This

Yes it was breaking a rule. Was it cheating? Depends on how you define it but on a narrow reading yes. But not really outside the normal realm of cheating and not as bad as diving really which is intent to deceive an official

soccer needs a goaltending rule like in basketball. it's utterly fucking stupid that uruguay could have a net positive gain from suarez cheating. i'm trying to think of some other sports analogies to what he did:

an american football player running down the sideline for the winning touchdown with no one else ahead of him, so he's going to score, but then someone on the sideline runs onto the field and tackles him. oops, no touchdown! though i think there's a rule where that's actually rewarded with 6 points anyways. let's assume there isn't. according to pete's logic, would that guy be making the right play and just doing what it takes to win? or if basketball had goaltending, except instead of getting the points you just inbound the ball and the goaltender gets a foul or something. then like dwight howard sticks his hand up through the net to punch out a game winning 3-pointer at the buzzer. no basket, and there's no time to inbounds for another shot so you lose even though the ball was literally passing through the rim. but that was the right play?

In hockey, when the goalie is pulled, a hauled down player on a breakaway is just given the goal that he clearly would score. A breakaway without the goalie pulled is nowhere near a sure goal, which Suarez prevented.