The FIFA Flop

The infamous flop.

It was into extra time of the World Cup qualifying match between France and Ireland. The score was tied, 1-1. The winner would go to South Africa to compete in the 2010 World Cup. The loser would go home. France took the ball into scoring position, and their star forward, Thierry Henry, scored to win the match for France. But something happened in the midst of Henry’s goal that would have changed the shape of the 2010 World Cup, if not Europe itself, but only the officials had seen it. Henry had illegally handed the ball in order to keep it in bounds before dropping it to his foot to kick the winning goal. Everyone but the officials had seen the infraction, yet the goal was still allowed. Outrage ensued.

The Football Association of Ireland made a statement saying that the missed call “damaged the integrity of the sport” and called for a replay of the match, which was denied by FIFA, the governing body of international soccer. Henry (who admitted minutes after the goal that the ball had in fact hit his hand) and the game’s head official considered retiring due to the weight of guilt. Questions were asked in Irish parliament as to what action the country should take against FIFA. Financial experts calculated that Ireland’s failure to qualify for the World Cup would cost the Irish economy millions of Euros, which it did. The Irish, after FIFA took no action, would later call for a boycott on French goods. The controversy spread like a cancer of ill will between the two countries.

FIFA’s response: “It’s just part of the game.” This response provokes many questions. For instance: what actually is the game, then? More importantly, what is the game’s purpose?

If victory is the aim of any sport, then it would be fair to say that victory’s ultimate aim is glory. And if glory is a fulfillment of justice, or rather, the utmost realization of innate rules, and sports are cultural institutions to express the inherent desire for glory, then FIFA is fouling their own sports’ original intention. This may seem like a far- too-attenuated examination of something that could be answered with a far less abstract argument, but FIFA, in all its ridiculousness, has brought us to ridiculous measures.

This year’s World Cup was chock full of blown calls, as most World Cups are, but the officials are not to blame. FIFA’s response remains that the drama of human fallibility is what makes the sport exciting, despite the rest of the world telling them that they are gravely mistaken.

To say that errancy is “just part of the game,” that “we enjoy the drama of human fallibility” is to miss the aim of sports altogether. Leave the drama of human fallibility to soap operas. Sport was born of the idea to “get it right.” No one watching a soccer match ever says, “I hope the refs get it wrong so we can see some drama.” We watch a game to witness victory, to experience a sense of glory, to experience fulfilled justice from competition. All sports are built on this premise. If this premise is taken away, the sport is compromised.

The encouraged errancy of rule enforcement in soccer is closer to a WWE ref being taken out by a folding chair so that the wrestler can cheat. It adheres to the anti-game. Here FIFA prefers a forgery of sport, not sport itself.

This forgery has produced an even uglier child than errant officiating: the flop. Like toddlers who have discovered that screaming gets them candy, flopping (or ‘diving’ as it’s called elsewhere) is now a de facto tactic. International soccer players have been trained (some more than others) that the slightest aggressive contact with an opposing player is their cue to dramatically flop onto the ground, grab their face as if they’ve been maced, and writhe around violently until an official awards their team with an advantage.

To sell it even further, trainers will trot on the field and carry the player off on a stretcher, even if their ‘injury’ has nothing to do with their ability to walk. In this year’s World Cup match between Brazil and Ivory Coast, the Brazilian star Kaka was ejected from the game after barely touching an Ivory Coast player who proceeded to flop, grab his face, and writhe in dramatic fashion. Kaka was held out of the next game.

ESPN commentator Alexi Lalas took the opportunity to frequently and snarkily remind us that the Italians are taught from a young age to “go down in the box” in an attempt to be awarded penalty kicks. And his analysis was spot on, as the Italian’s flops were displayed to a laughable extent throughout this year’s group stage.

The flop is a product of a sport’s culture that espouses highly subjective rule enforcement. It’s not that the players are cheap; it’s that cheating is now part of the strategy to win the game. Flopping is infuriating to watch. It’s shameful. It is, again, a forgery. But the players are merely playing within the culture of the game that FIFA has created.

So, is there any hope for the future of soccer in America? Can FIFA remove the bad reputation that flopping and poor officiating have created in soccer?

There is reticence to adopt instant replay. The reasoning is that the fluidity and spontaneity of the game are what make it exciting; that soccer is the ultimate “play-through” sport, and interfering with the “essence” of the game would be detrimental to its tradition. But FIFA is apparently willing to compromise integrity for “essence.” What sport has FIFA witnessed that has suffered from adopting better officiating via instant replay? Look no further than tennis and baseball, the last two sports that stubbornly came along on the issue, and you’ll see that replay has repeatedly had a net-positive effect.

The more reasonable and practical option to improve the game has bafflingly not yet been implemented: adding more officials. There are only four officials on an international soccer field that measures significantly larger than an NFL field, which requires a whopping seven officials. More officials for the “world’s sport” is an easy and affordable option.

The opportunities to enhance the game are there. FIFA needs only to pull the trigger.

In a recent article in The New Yorker, television critic Nancy Franklin summed up the casual American soccer observer’s attitude and frustrations quite aptly:

I tried watching World Cup games four years ago and was preoccupied with the peculiarity of a sport that doesn’t allow the use of arms, which, after all, make up half our complement of excellent sporting appendages (forty per cent, if you include heads), and of the confounding combination of endless minutes of scoreless running around and free kicks that lead to sudden goals. (My analysis, which may not qualify me for on-camera commentary, was “That just doesn’t seem right somehow.”)

What Franklin describes is precisely why Americans will continue to resist soccer in our culture. A lot of the game “just doesn’t seem right” because it’s not fully achieving the sport’s purpose and potential. This year we heard commentators from a myriad of countries talk about the need for more goals, better officiating, and fewer flops, yet FIFA continued to arrogantly ignore their athletes and fans. In the 2010 World Cup, we saw more goals unfairly disallowed and more false flops rewarded, resulting in yet another tournament with watered down athleticism despite athletes who are giving it their all.

The problem with FIFA’s consistent response that “it’s just part of the game” is a statement like that doesn’t hold anyone responsible. Why is it just part of the game? Who allowed it? Do fans and players really prefer it that way? If popular opinion has to be consistently met with the response of “its just part of the game,” then something is wrong. “It’s just part of the game” is an excuse, not an answer. Excuses are for the culpable. When it comes to the glory-purposed world of sports, our world’s cultures want answers, not excuses. It’s only when we get those answers that soccer will be become a sport worthy of a “global” status. Until then, officiating and players’ intentions will remain suspect and country’s teams that are improperly officiated will continue to scream collusion, giving headaches to FIFA’s public relations department.

FIFA has the opportunity to change the culture of soccer. To do so, they must trade in their arrogance, and in return, receive the massive potential of an American market. Until they do so, Americans will continue to be biased against soccer, but perhaps for good reason.