FIFA 2010 World Cup: The Suarez ban may be for just one match for the hand-ball, but FIFA officials to impose harsher rules for the future
As new words are being made up for Luis Suarez’ s hand ball against Ghana like ‘the Hand of God’, ‘the hand of Frog’ and ‘the Hand of Clod’ FIFA has taken severe notice of the foul committed by star striker from Uruguay.
The match between the underdogs of the tournament had an extremely controversial finish. In the first half of the quarter final match, Sulley Muntari scored in the injury time of first half, the 45+2nd minute. The match became more intense when it resumed and eventually the skipper Diego Forlan came up with the equalizer in the 55th minute completely confounding the Ghanaian goalkeeper.
After injury time, the match went into extra time and near the very of a free kick was awarded to the Black Stars. After some fumble inside the D the ball was travelling over head into net when Suarez stopped in volley ball style with both hands.
He was sent of the pitch with a red card along with hard opposition from the Ghanaian players. Suarez went of the pitch anxiously as Asamoah Gyan, from Ghana lined up to take the awarded penalty. However, after the penalty Suarez couldn’t have been happier of his actions. Gyan missed the penalty hitting on the top bar, which lead the ball out of the field.
Suarez was extremely exuberant on the incident and though he knew that he had sacrificed himself from the semi finals, he had in fact helped in keeping the hopes of his team alive, to enter the World semi finals. His happiness was quadrupled when he saw that Gyan had actually missed the penalty when he hit the top bar of the goal post and the ball deflected outside the field.
At that moment, Suarez was under the impression that the he was going to miss out on just one match, due to the red card rule. Which is the general case, when a player is red carded, he is expelled from the proceeding match in which he was red carded and furthermore, he is also banned from the next scheduled match. However the under pressure, FIFA took into consideration of extending the punishment, as had that goal occurred, Ghana instead of Uruguay would have went on to the finals. Their foul play was however, penalized but it still gave them the edge, sadly, for Ghana, they had not been able to take advantage of that.
After the incident, FIFA stated that Suarez could be ruled out for the rest of the tournament. It was after all foul play that had led Uruguay to the next stage. Now Suarez will be out of the encounter against Netherlands; a team which has outclassed Brazil, kicking them out of the World Cup.
The Disciplinary committee of FIFA has stated that they are going to review the situation and eventually decide on the punishment for Suarez. There are many that are convinced that in circumstances like these, the punishment should be extended further and should have more dire consequences. Early reports by FIFA have revealed that they are looking into a 5 match ban for Suarez but that was has just been contradicted by the FIFA officials, as they stated that the one match ban would proceed for the player.
FIFA’s official spokesman Pekka Odriozola explained the proceeding of the committee to media saying, “For automatic red cards there is an automatic one-match suspension. The disciplinary committee also opens a case and they will be looking at that incident and taking a decision”.
Still it was also relayed that it was most likely that the one match ban will proceed in the end, though the committee is looking forward to reviewing the rules and bring up a new one in situation such as these, i.e. ‘Hand of Shame.’
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