Chew on this: FIFA is part of Luis Suarez's biting problem

There is no excuse for one grown man to bite another on a football pitch. FIFA absolutely needs to throw the book at Luis Suarez for chomping down on the shoulder of Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini like a thirsty vampire at the end of a month-long diet. Yet Suarez’s comments after the game should give us a moment’s pause. In an interview with Uruguay’s Channel 10, Suarez said: “These are just things that happen out on the pitch. It was just the two of us inside the area and he bumped into me with his shoulder, and that’s how my eye got like this as well. “There are things that happen on the pitch and you should not make such a big deal out of them.” [caption id=“attachment_1588185” align=“alignleft” width=“397”]  To bite or not to bite, that is the question for Luis Suarez. AFP[/caption] In today’s big-money, high-stakes sporting world, there is a lot that happens on the pitch that is acknowledged with no more than a wink and a smile. Players are expected and encouraged to do whatever it takes to win. A forward bursting through on goal has to be stopped, even if it takes a cynical foul that brings down the player with no attempt to get the ball. Baiting an opponent is also fair game. Who can forget Cristiano Ronaldo’s wink at his bench after his theatrics helped in getting his Manchester United team-mate Wayne Rooney sent off in Portugal’s win over England in the 2006 World Cup? Antics are justified if they bring your team a noticeable advantage. Then there is diving, or simulation as FIFA likes to call it. The rationale is that the referee is there to make a decision and if he makes the wrong one, good for you. That rationale ignores the larger principle of personal integrity. It is in effect saying that it okay to cheat as long as you don’t get caught. In the NBA, players are now fined for flopping, the equivalent of diving. This happens even after the fact, as in the case of the league review resulting in Dwayne Wade of the Miami Heat being fined $5,000 for flopping against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 2 of the NBA finals. Yet FIFA does nothing. Anyone who watched the replay of Brazil forward Fred tumbling to the ground against Croatia with arms raised even as he fell could see it was a dive. FIFA’s reaction was to simply shrug its shoulders, indicating it is all part of the game. In the 1990s, New York city was bedeviled by violent crime. The police force decided to adopt the “Broken Windows” theory of crime, which in plain language claims it is harder to be bad when everything around you is good. The New York City police concentrated on cracking down on vandalism and petty theft in an effort to make sure the city looked nice. The result was a marked decrease in violent crime. In footballing terms, cutting out the diving and the theatrics could translate to a decrease in violent fouls. This isn’t Suarez’s first brush with World Cup scandal either. Four years ago, he stuck out a hand to prevent Ghana from scoring the winning goal in the World Cup quarter-finals. Suarez was sent off but Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan missed the penalty and Uruguay went on to win the game on penalties. Suarez wound up a home-town hero (though admittedly criticised almost everywhere else) and earlier this year told the Telegraph he would do the same thing all over again. “For me I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “I sacrificed playing in a World Cup semi-final for my team-mates to have a chance to play in that game." That Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez said he didn’t see the incident, and still proceeded to vociferously defend his star player is symptomatic of the same ideology. Every coach wants a player who will do anything to win (as long as it doesn’t cross the line into damaging the team’s chances). Individual actions, however, tend to reflect the wider cultural norms in which they occur. Sports, all sports and not just football, have moved towards an ethos where doing whatever it takes for your team to win is a badge of honour (cricket’s debate about walking is a case in point). The ideals of the game are secondary to the interest of the team. Only Suarez knows what went through his mind as he bared his considerable set of teeth. Perhaps he wanted to provoke Chiellini into a reaction and get a second Italian player sent off as his team desperately needed a goal to progress to the next round. Perhaps, he was willing to sacrifice himself again for the sake of his country in case both men were sent off. Perhaps he was simply frustrated after having little influence on the game up until that point. It is unlikely we will ever know. But in a sport where there is intense pressure to win, where the rewards are enormous and the punishments comparatively minor, Suarez is not the only one who needs to look in the mirror. The way the sport is encouraged to be played is part of the problem.