World Cup karma

I've just watched Holland knock out Uruguay in the World Cup semi-finals. That's a result that will please the Dutch - but I also suspect it will please Ghana supporters too.




In the quarter finals one of the Uruguay players deliberately and purposefully used his arm to deny Ghana a goal. Ghana were thus denied what would have been not just a goal, but in all likelihood the winning goal. In the event the cheating player was sent off and Ghana were awarded a penalty - which they promptly missed. Eventually Uruguay ran out winners in a penalty shootout.



It's one thing to cheat; quite another to revel in it, without any hint of remorse, let alone shame. After the match the Uruguayan player, rather than issue a mea culpa of any sort, positively delighted in his deception. "The hand of God belongs to me now," he crowed, in reference to Diego Maradona's infamous incident of cheating to claim a goal against England in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.



It is indicative of how low sport in general, and football in particular, has sunk that cheating is now a cause for celebration when perpetrated in the name of 'your country'. As I have argued before, associating teams with nations is an error, a form of anthropomorphism. And yes, my insult to footballers was intentional.



The inversion of any type of moral code, any definition of honourable behaviour, is now complete. Cheating is lauded as virtue, cynicism as heroic; as long as they are perpetrated in the context of national sporting competition. Would the cheating Uruguayan have been so bold if he had perpetrated his act for a mere club, allegiance to which players drop rather quickly when mammon is dangled in front of them?



Cheats do sometimes win. But here's the catch: it comes back to haunt them in the end. Sometimes more quickly than they think. So Uruguay were eliminated in the very next game, and we will remember them for that dishonest incident; longer, I suspect than we will remember them for Forlan's goals. Maradona was a great player but not a great human being. His team was just recently humiliated 4-0 by the Germans.



And England? All their swagger and arrogance, from their showboating lifestyles to Steven Gerrard saying to an interviewer that Algeria fixture England was "their world cup final", has been aptly rewarded. It is ironic that ever since 1966 , when they were not a little fortuitous, that year has become a millstone around their collective necks, an albatross that has hampered them ever since.



What goes around comes around.