The crux of the problem is the Hand of God goal and whether, if you could, you would go back in time and stop the referee from awarding it. This is where you confess to the moon that you view the sport a certain way and that you think of it as a game or a story. I think of it as a story, which is why I wouldn’t change anything about the Hand of God goal even if I had control of all dimensions. But it’s easy to understand both viewpoints.
If soccer is a game, then the rules are the truth and the Hand of God was a travesty, a moment of supreme falsehood in which all the structures of the game broke down completely. If a game is rigged it isn’t a game (it becomes a story); fairness is the basis of all athletic competition; and when fairness doesn’t exist all that can result is shame, outrage, exploitation, and grief. Undoing the Hand of God would be a way of restoring integrity to a moment that lacked it. Maradona cheated, the end.
If soccer is a story, then things get more complicated, because the narrative can take in anything and because its aesthetic greatness doesn’t depend on the sympathy between actions and the rules. You wouldn’t stop Macbeth from killing the king, because then you wouldn’t have Macbeth. From the perspective of the game, the Zidane headbutt was at best a distraction, and at worst a disgrace; from the perspective of the story, it was a moment that instantly and utterly transcended the match in which it took place. (For the rest of your life, unless and possibly even if you are an Italy fan, you will remember Materazzi for provoking the headbutt before you remember him for scoring Italy’s equalizer.) By the same token, the Hand of God was too great and all-comprehending a moment for the rules to have created it: it was a total summation—of Maradona’s character, of the nature of that rivalry, of everything on up to the international climate in the years after Falklands War and arguably the entire 1980s—that couldn’t possibly have existed if it weren’t at a slant to the rules. Lose that and you’re left with a fair, pure, antiseptic match that fulfills the ideal of the sport but sacrifices almost all its truest and deepest significance.
So what does that say about bad refereeing? Probably nothing, except that in this as in all things we’re approaching the verge of a paradox. The “game as a story/save the Hand of God” line makes no sense as an argument for design; that is, you can’t tell FIFA, “please make sure your refereeing isn’t perfectly fair because a certain amount of bad refereeing enhances the narrative of the game.” There’s no doubt that a certain amount of bad refereeing enhances the narrative of the game, but that isn’t FIFA’s angle, and in any case giving match officials a certain quota of blown calls to reach would just trade epic accidents for bureaucratic stupidities. The Hand of God wouldn’t mean anything if it had resulted from discretionary refereeing choice built into the rules of the game, because you can’t program spontaneous mysticism.
What that means is that, if we care about the sport as a story, we have to hope that the people in charge of running it do their jobs just badly enough to ensure that the Hand of God is possible. The wider the circle within which you’re willing to see the game as aesthetic, in other words, the more you wind up relying on chance and accident. If soccer is only a game—that is, aesthetic only in the most limited and technical sense—then it can achieve perfection as a deliberate design or as a successfully realized intention. If it’s a story—that is, aesthetic in a more primary sense—it can’t. If you want a masterpiece, the artist has to screw up. The lamest defense of bad refereeing in the world is “human error is part of the game.” It isn’t; but it is certainly, and problematically, part of the story.
Read More: Refereeing
by Brian Phillips · April 20, 2010
Far from “flailing around”, it seems to me that you have gotten this one exactly right.
This is just, like, my opinion, man, but I don’t think you have to worry about too much about the “people in charge” failing to run things badly enough. I’m not particularly upset about it, either — though maybe that’s more because I’m highly critical of efforts that depend on erasing failability from systems, and less because I buy into a dichotomy between story and game (though I think you’re being more subtle than just setting up a dichotomy).
That ’86 affair is perfect for this great argument, because the other goal Maradona scored in the same game was THE example of the game itself providing a mammoth narrative. But nobody ever discusses the “goal of the century” (at least, not unless Messi gets all Lake Eerie and covers it note-for-note), probably because it doesn’t really leave much to polarization (who would argue against its merit?), but more so because of what came just four minutes prior.
@j That’s probably because of whom you and I read. Maybe Elliot’s [of Futfanatico fame’s] familiarity with the Spanish language blogosphere/press might help here, but, since people from the Iberian peninsula — and some other parts of the world — view football through a different prism, I would hazard a guess that they might actually remember the ‘goal of the century’ more than the hand of God.
Another good point, I do like it when football has the narrative to involve you into the emotion of the whole occasion. However, just thinking about the Hand of God argument and that making a great story could you not also say, in nearly equal measure, that if the referee had seen the obvious handball and the match had been tied up at 1-1 then the following extra time and penalties wouldn’t have been as good as that scandal?
Probably not.
I just think that it is important to not get too carried away with wanting to presserve a story, there has to be more of a clear reason to keep this painful part of the game. Unless FIFA starts declaring itself as ‘Sports Entertainment’ then we should not forget about the ‘sport’ part and how that must be treated.
@Red Ranter As someone who has lived in various parts of Europe for over a decade and regularly reads the non-English language football press, I would say that the vast majority of the non-Anglocentric football world remembers the goal of the century more than the Hand of God.
@ursus arctos Ah, thank you! 🙂
I really haven’t conducted a poll monkey or study, but I definitely recall “el gol del siglo” much more than the hand of the ‘donna. Of course, when I lived in Buenos Aires, I reminded my porteno friends about the manito whenever I could, but that other gol kinda shuts up all critics.
I think Brian highlighted a crucial perspective distinction – accepting imperfection, versus hit-your-head-against-pole insistence on scientific certainty. I’ve always wondered why baseball fans accept a “something something strike zone”, whereas NFL fans insist on counting & measuring yards.
Another example is the “handball.” While playing in Argentina, I would have to punch a ball with a closed fist to get a call against me. However, in other parts of the world, if you don’t properly use all shoulder you get a whistle. Bright line rule? Shades of gray?
And, of course, cynical players who push the limits take advantage of these subtleties, whether is be lassez-faire tackling or blind-to-handball refs.
I think I’ll mostly remember Materazzi for putting a stupid hat on the world cup
All: I remember the goal of the century more than the Hand of God goal. Doesn’t mean the latter wasn’t an incredible moment.
Probably shouldn’t have gone hyperbolic and made a claim denouncing Maradona’s second; I almost feel it depreciates both to try and put them on a tiered podium, waging one against the other, and so for that I stand corrected.
I think what I was trying to say is the Hand of God is the “great white buffalo”, if you will, of this debate, and that’s precisely because of the narrative in which it exists — The Goal right after, the Anglo opponent, the final score, the Falklands, Maradona’s life since — everything. They all enhance each other as moments; makes me wonder if by taking the Hand of God out of the equation in the name of fairness, do people think as biblically of the absolute brilliance that followed?
“If soccer is only a game—that is, aesthetic only in the most limited and technical sense—then it can achieve perfection as a deliberate design or as a successfully realized intention.”
Arsène Wenger prefers this interpretation.
@ebullientfatalist Yet recently also disproves it.
Nicely said, Brian.
It’s interesting to consider that despite many intelligent people understanding this Game v Story contrast, if Sepp Blatter came out and used the Story explanation as justification for not introducing technology, he would be laughed at.
It makes me think that perhaps he already has that opinion and simply does not want to express it. Perhaps he is a little cleverer than we give him credit for?
I feel there’s too much pressure on referees (Death threats from supporters, demotion, and being constantly under attack from managers). Perhaps as a consequence, they are getting match-changing decisions wrong, all the time. Every week games are soured with controversy and outrage. Big teams do seem to get more decisions (maybe stats will disprove this?) and managers are always trying to unsettle refs, it does seem to work a lot of the time. Everyone gets so angry, the integrity of the game is suffering and yet there is a ready solution to this problem. It just seems like belligerence when TV viewers can see it was not a penalty after 3 seconds and the referee cannot use this knowledge. Why? The 4th official could tell him easily enough. The trial with the extra linesmen in the Europa League was a joke, why go to this much trouble and not just use the sodding cameras?
Guess I’m a gamer, cause what I remember are the 2 fantastic semi-final games previous to the boring-highlighted-by-a-head-butt game. Was not around (soccer) for the hand of god, but my youtube assisted memory knows every nuance of the goal of the century.
…but keep up the story telling Brian. I’ll just think of it as a game that you usually win..and so vicariously do I.
@Pete I definitely agree that death threats are out of place – it is a game, people!
However, on the Iberian peninsula, the “big teams get calls” argument has always manifested itself in preposterous forms. For example, when Barca won the double in 2006, a certain Madrid media pointed out that Barca won more penalty kicks than any other team. Thus, goes the argument, Barca had the refs on their side, making favorable calls. However, maybe, just maybe, Barca got more penalty kicks because Ronaldinho, Deco, and E’too were running defense s ragged and getting fouled. Maybe.
So, in terms of chicken & egg, the big teams do boast star players that maybe, just maybe, play the game better than other sides and thus they get fouled.
Of course, the SAF injury time special is anomaly, unique to Scottish managers with 20 plus years of experience
Whilst reading this excellent article something occurred to me. Whenever Sepp Blatter or FIFA defend their aversion to video technology with the argument that controversy creates debate for fans, are they not defending football as narrative rather than as a simple game?
Discuss…
Another aspect of what I will call the HOG vs the GOC is that the former puts the latter in even starker relief—in other words, the two exist in eternal dynamic tension that would be absent if there was no HOG. One could argue that the GOC seems all the more luminous BECAUSE of the HOG.
The rules are the ideal, the transitory action on the field is the reality, and the sport exists in the rupture between the two. And now I’m going to finish getting HIGH.
But wouldn’t a great narrative still have existed if Maradona had been caught in the most outrageous act of cheating…a total summation—of Maradona’s character, of the nature of that rivalry, of everything on up to the international climate in the years after Falklands War and arguably the entire 1980s?
I agree completely, Brian: http://wp.me/pi4BE-qW
@Mark Chalcraft Agreed. I was hinting at that, too 🙂
I think the issues arises most when there has been a sense of ‘horrendous injustice’ done. Take the Inter-Barca game for instance. Milito’s third goal was a clean yard offside and yet people don’t feel like clamouring for it (except the Catalans of course) because, well, he was ‘due’ one. However, assume someone else happens to score an offside goal after having been dominated by the opponent (in most cases, Arsenal) for the whole game. Then all of the world bemoans your ‘just badly enough’ refereeing. Thus bringing us to my grouse against your hoping refs actually do ‘just bad enough’ refereeing. Someone’s always bound to get pissed when that happens and that’s just not good for the game.
I consider acts like the Hand of God part of the “game.” After all, the game is constructed in such a way that skillful cheating can be as important to winning as skillful marking or skillful passing. When you’ve got a single referee plus two linesmen charged with looking after 22 players, you’re asking for a certain amount of intentional rule breaking on the part of the players. The willingness of certain players and certain teams to engage in this type of behaviour, though, relates very much to the narrative side of the sport.
I tend toward the story interpretation of the game; for me it’s more fun that way (as an American, I also share that deathly fear that clock stoppage will somehow be introduced–it would ruin the game completely as far as I’m hysterically concerned). Proponents of the game as a game view do have a good point going for them though, in that for every bad-refereeing Macbeth there are about 10,000 bad-refereeing Harry Potters.
As an Englishman (read: “victim of a flaky, perm-topped cheat”) who has lived in Spain for many years (read: “automatic admirer of the greatest one-man football show on earth”), I’ve always been fascinated by Maradona’s Hand of God goal. I’ve reached the conclusion that the events that take on mythical status in popular culture always need a proper, evocative name to give them a leg up to immortality – and “The Hand of God” is up there with The Night of the Long Knives, Watergate and the Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction. Their naming is so perfect that they raise the events they refer to a higher plane, assuring their position as the benchmark against which all other opportunistic goals, ruthless exercises in political housecleaning, klutzy exercises in political housebreaking or prime-time nipple flashes will be measured against into perpetuity.
Maradona – not usually the most eloquent of men – might easily had said in the post-match interview what players are expected – coached, even? – to say in those circumstances: “Well, um, the ball might just have glanced my hand, I suppose, but the ref said it was a goal, so hey, watcha gonna do?” But no. The script for the game-as-a-story had a different line for Maradona to say: “Fue la mano de Dios”. And thus what would would otherwise have passed as a fleeting moment of banal comedy was transformed into an everlasting icon of Greek tragedy – complete with fate-tempting hubris, deus ex machina, the works.
I like this perspective quite a bit but take exception with the ‘do their jobs just badly enough’ conclusion. In fact, the job exceeds the ability of a human being to do it. How many times have you watched the call in live action and thought one thing and then changed your mind several times as you watch the replays? These errors are part of the game/story, not because the powers that be want them to be, or because fans like a good story but because the job of referee CAN NOT be done perfectly. Adding replay or more referees will never change that. Thankfully in soccer referees actually get more calls right than in any sport (IMHO). It’s just that in a game where a single goal is often decisive, errors cost more and are more visible. But it’s still better than basketball where 25-50% of all calls are wrong when replayed.