Well when Suarez did it Uruguay won the game.
Premier League 2019/20
- Thread starter Ulrich
- Start date
Well when Suarez did it Uruguay won the game.
I am mildly pro-Liverpool, kind of glad that they won yet certainly not enough to celebrate or take joy in their success, BUT
Jurgen Klopp is one of my favorite people in sports. This is just delightful.. His reaction is so real and heartfelt.
Jurgen Klopp is one of my favorite people in sports. This is just delightful.. His reaction is so real and heartfelt.
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Right. Someone published an analysis a while back of whether it makes sense to save a goal with a handball if the cost is a penalty and a red card. It cited the Suarez goal in particular.
The benefit of saving the goal is that you end up with a penalty instead, which has only a 75% or so chance of succeeding. The cost of the red card is less objective but capable of estimation by looking at the goal deficit suffered by teams playing a man down.
The conclusion was that it makes sense to take the red card and save the goal late in the game. I can’t recall the exact minute they came up with, but given that the incident in yesterday’s game happened in the 78’, it was probably the right move. I think the Suarez card was judged to have been a benefit.
That was great, thanks.
I too really like Klopp. Such infectious enthusiasm. Does anyone else think the contrast between he and Pep is like Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban?
Of course, I won’t believe that Liverpool actually won it until @midasmulligan makes an appearance and tells us how drunk he got last night.
With slightly more colorful language.
Yeah, that Suarez handball was even later in the game if I am recalling it correctly.
I'm very conflicted with handballs in those scenarios (i.e., blatant, goal-saving handballs).
On one hand, with the analysis you cited it can help your team and kind of goes with "do anything to help your team win" and I get that. In Suarez's case, it kept Uruguay alive in that match and they would not have advanced in the WC without it.
On the other hand, it feels so damn cheap. It's going in. You aren't supposed to use your hands. It's not on accident.
I'm not sure why this feels (to me) much worse than committing an egregious foul that accomplishes the same thing. I'm trying to think of examples from other sports to relate this to and am struggling a bit on that.
I hate it, even more than I hate the "professional foul" to break up a strong counter attack. Play the game the way it's supposed to be played!
That's the part I'm struggling with. I have no issue with the "professional foul" thing. Even when its players literally grabbing and holding an opponent. I'm not sure why I'm ok with that and not ok with this. Seems somewhat hypocritical of me but I dunno.
Yeah they are different scenarios. I don't so much judge the players for the pro foul, I just hate seeing it because it breaks up potentially exciting opportunities. It reminds me of how difficult it was to watch the hack a shaq basketball games.
I'd like to see some type of additional penalty to discourage it, but that would be subjective on the referees part and open to lots of controversy so I don't have a good solution. Make your keeper step up!
My closest analogy is pass interference in football. It's not exact, but it has similar elements and the sport struggles with it. In the NFL, the penalty for a PI call against the defense is determined by the length of the pass, and often is 30-40 yards and even more. It is by far the largest penalty in the sport. I college, unless they changed it (I don't keep up with CFB as much) it is a 15-yard penalty even if the pass was going to be for 40 yards and a touchdown.
Both penalties fail. No one is happy with their application across all instances of PI. When the penalty is only 15 yards, any time a CB is about to get torched he should rationally just grab the receiver and pull him down. When the penalty is the full length, you often get borderline good faith defending penalized with egregious yard totals. But even with the harsher penalty, it can be like the soccer situation because PI in the end zone gives the offense the ball on the 2-yard line, and sometimes they don't score at all, or often only a field goal.
But even there, most PI involves good faith if sometimes clumsy defending and is not cynical. For that I offer 2 examples.
First, several years ago, when the Patriots and Colts annually met in the playoffs, a rumor briefly floated that Belichick told his defenders to commit PI on every play because the refs would never call it that often and it was the best way to stop Peyton Manning. The rumor didn't have legs, and as much as I despise Belichick I can't say it's true, but it did lead to some debate as to whether that was a legitimate tactic. Some said reality is what it is and if you can grab an advantage by breaking rules because enforcement cannot keep up then do so. Others thought there had to be a good faith effort to play within the rules. The debate didn't fall along fandom loyalties either.
Second, in a reverse direction I think of basketball players who intentionally create contact with defenders knowing that as stars, and on offense, they will get the call 90+% of the time even when the defender stays vertical and does not move into the contact. I'm old so my best examples are Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller. They were both absolutely masterful at this. To me that is just as cynical as a defender who commits an intentional handball or grabs a receiver's shirt but the offensive side of this cynical play is very rarely criticized.
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