Hand of God

I never confess to be an full fledged football fan, but I couldn't help getting caught in the football frenzy during the World Cup. From the very first world cup 1998, which I started to follow , I have tried to follow the beautiful game. Though I don't care about EPL or any other club football league unlike other self confessed football fans. Now getting back to point, whats ironic with Football is the term " Hand of God "  . For people unfamiliar with Football, this phrase was originally coined for Maradona's Goal in 1986 World Cup semi final against England. The score was nil-nil until Maradona got a pass , which he manipulated using his hand to score the winning goal against England.

Its ironic that minutes later after the most controversial Goal of the World cup, Maradona went onto score arguably the best Goal of the World cup beating every England Mid fielder. Argentina eventually went onto win the World Cup.

Its interesting to study this phenomenon and compare it to real life. First of all, people call it the Hand of God, but as one of my friends put it , " Why do they associate some trickery and cheating in a game with God's name , ideally it should be dubbed the Hand of Devil..." . Even more surprising , the team having the player who uses the Hand of God seems eventually to go onto win the match every time in spite of cheating. Consider the World Cup qualifier game for 2010 between France and Ireland;  France where in a embarrassing position so as to not even qualify for the 2010 World cup , unless they made it a draw or win. The score was 0-1 in favor of the Irish , until the Theiry Henry's infamous Hand helped french to score a Goal to dash the Irish hopes of the world cup.

If you thought the previous two Hand balls were subtle have , wait and until you see the Uruguay's Suavez Hand Ball that prevented Ghana from winning. The score was 1-1 well into second extra time, until this happened

A Blatant stopping of the ball using Hand, but unlike the previous two times where the referees missed the Hand Ball, it was noticed this time and Suavez was red carded. But as fate would have it, the guy who took the penalty for Ghana after this missed it. The game went into penalty only for Uruguay to win and go through to semi final. So whats the moral of the story, cheaters seem to get way with it and win. No , thats not the point I want to drive home here, but rather when the stakes are high ( there is no greater glory than World Cup in Football) and you are in desperate position, every player given the bate to get way with cheating and win, he seems to take it, with striking consistency; Ethics , Morality, Right and Wrong all take a backseat, what seems to matter is winning on that moment, methods don't matter. In a way this situation the beautiful game  mirrors the many real life situations , after all " Good people are bad people  who don't caught doing bad things" .!!!

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