As much as I despise cheating, the Luis Suarez last-second handball that saved Uruguay’s World Cup bacon against Ghana is a leopard of a very different spot.
It was a moment of absolute blind panic – both ways. Ghana were desperate to cash in a goal, and avoid the nightmare of penalty kicks in their hugely dramatic bid to be the first African nation ever to qualify for the World Cup’s final four. Uruguay were in defensive tatters, their goalie out of the play, the ball rocketing for the back of their net.
In war, this is an instantaneous, fatal decision. By reaching out his arm to block the ball, Suarez essentially threw his body over a hand grenade to give his platoon mates a chance to live through the night. He was instantly red-carded – and suspended, and his teammates still had to stand around and watch the imminent nightmare of Asamoah Gyan’s penalty kick.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Nothing instantaneous about this. Masses of people who were actually watching the game missed Suarez’s suicidal second. Glanced away, looking for the popcorn, opening a beer, letting your best friend in the door because he picked that fated moment to arrive (that’s what happened to me, at least).
But there’s no such mercy on a penalty kick at 120 minutes of extra time. Last kick of the game. Striker should connect at along about a ninety-per-cent kill rate. Everyone rushes to the screen to see it. The viewing audience grows hugely in the minute or so it takes to sort out the pre-kick niceties. What do you bet two-thirds of the entire nation of Ghana was watching by the time Gyan addressed the ball?
I wonder – now – how it might possibly feel to have the entire weight of your home nation dropped on you from a great height? All Gyan had to do was burn one ball past one very small and inexperienced netminder, and the biggest soccer street party in the history of coastal West Africa would have instantaneously ignited.
The military mission was clear. Gyan had been chosen to summarily execute the impudent Suarez – and all his South American squadron mates besides. The futility of the Uruguayan target man’s sacrifice was about to be made plain. Justice – by anybody’s measure – was about to be done.
(Yes, yes, I know this all goes out the window if Ghana was as offside as a large number of still photos all over the internet suggest. That’s another metaphor for another time. Today, we field the call that was actually made.)
I have written, more than occasionally, that penalty kicks are psychologically sadistic. Not for the goalies. They know damn well they’re supposed to lose. The only thing that can statistically go wrong on a spot kick is if the ball stays out of the net. And that’s so rare – on any normal day in any normal park – it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Ah, but Gyan was thinking about it. It was burning in his desperate eyes. All that endless time that passes as the call is made and Suarez is red-carded and the ball is put on the spot and Suarez slowly wanders to the sideline and everyone in Ghana who is watching the game shouts, screams, urges and summons everyone in Ghana who isn’t watching the game to hurry hurry right this minute get over here and watch this game!!!
For all of that emotional eternity, Asamoah Gyan stood alone.
It’s not a time you want to think. Not helpful to know what’s at stake – and certainly corrosive to the cranium to even slightly ponder at the aching implications … of a miss. Kill that thought. Banish it. But now you think about NOT thinking about missing.
And the problem is so simple. Get that ball away from the goalie, and safely into the net. He’s not even a big goalie. Just under the bar should do it. Just under … just under … maybe just a titch more lift to be certain ….
And just like that, Asamoah Gyan hits the crossbar. Uruguay is alive through deception, but have survived their penalty, and the rules are clear.
For now, it really doesn’t matter that Ghana lost the subsequent shootout, and that two quite different Ghanaians other than Gyan missed their shots, and that’s why Ghana really lost. History will never remember that.
One man had one almost-certain shot to lift his nation higher than anyone on their entire continent had ever climbed. And the shot – with no interference whatsoever from the opposing goalie – never made it to the net.
How do you live with something like that? How will that ever, ever go away? All of Gyan’s inspired, often brilliant play, the lifetime of physical punishment it took to even bet there in the first place, the certain knowledge that nine times out of ten he becomes his country’s Paul Henderson if that cursed ball had settled in the twine.
Too much, folks. Too much.
Things like this happen in war. My grandfather met my grandmother when he returned from World War I with the news that her fiancée had been killed in action – after the armistice was signed. If that pointless, extra-time tragedy doesn’t happen, I’m not here to tell this tale.
If Suarez doesn’t cheat, Gyan never gets a chance to be the hero. Nor does he get to be the scapegoat.
As a wrenching piece of human drama, the whole damn couple of minutes were astonishing. But this was war, and there were casualties.
My hatred of cheating is reserved for those who were neither caught, nor punished. You know who you are, Diego, and I thoroughly enjoyed what happened to you this weekend.
Suarez was caught, and punishment was swift. The bitter battlefield tragedy is that Asamoah Gyan will never be free of the memory.
Onward!