Saturday, July 03, 2010

Loopholes


So here's Suarez playing goalie when he's not allowed to, which led to a last-second penalty for Ghana against Uruguay last night. But since Gyan missed the penalty, the match went to a penalty shootout, which Uruguay won.

Arguably, then, Uruguay was rewarded for Suarez's cheating. That's one way to look at it, but really it's a loophole that a player can exploit: stop a certain goal, get sent off, and hope the opponent misses the penalty. (They later showed Suarez's reaction from the tunnel when Gyan missed the penalty.)

And loopholes are inevitable: every system of rules has loopholes that people can exploit, and all attempts to close the loopholes lead to the creation of further loopholes.