Mi último post relativo al asunto, también publicado en foros del Liverpool hoy. Saludos
Appealing?
I am really touched by all the comments following my post and I thank you all. I am no lawyer so I cannot have a grounded professional opinion on whether Liverpool should appeal or not. I have always seen the case as a disgrace, in the sense that what is really at stake seems to involve some of the contents of the public imaginary in GBritain --contents that, in some clear ways, are not nice towards us South Americans. The particular image Luis is projecting (I would say he is vaguely perceived by his rivals and the general public, with the exception of the Liverpool fans, as both a cunning and dangerous individual) set him up for this. It was just a matter of when he would make a mistake--or something that could be presented that way. That mistake happened.
In the football codes of our area of the world, Evra should be considered a pariah --and I wouldn't like to be him in the pitch facing some of the friends or fellow players of the guy he attacked. But in your codes, it seems it is seen the other way around by many--as if Evra was doing "Public Justice" or "the Law" a big favor with his report.
There are clear codes in football--at least in our football game in South America. Evra has not understood this, or is voluntarily breaking them.
It is not that we don't see football as an important thing, but (maybe because we have always had much bigger problems than that to cope with) we just cannot understand when somebody crosses the line and makes what was clearly a normal discussion within the limits of the game, occasion for a public lynching of a colleague. Justice is not being served there because the whole thing is completely out of proportion.
Let me quote something the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges said in one of his essays --and what he says about Argentines applies equally well to Uruguayans, since we are such close and similar countries and basically the same culture:
"The Argentine, unlike the Americans of the North and almost all Europeans, does not identify with the State. This is attributable to the circumstance that the governments in this country tend to be awful, or to the general fact that the State is an inconceivable abstraction. One thing is certain: the Argentine is an individual, not a citizen. Aphorisms such as Hegel's "The State is the reality of the moral idea" strike him as sinister jokes. Films made in Hollywood often hold up for admiration the case of a man (usually a journalist) who seeks out the friendship of a criminal in order to hand him over to the police; the Argentine, for whom friendship is a passion and the police a mafia, feels that this "hero" is an incomprehensible swine." (Borges, "Our Poor Individualism")
In our South American vision, Evra falls right into the category of the incomprehensible swine. You might have a discussion in the field, but to go out to the authorities and report a fellow player with the clear purpose of destroying his career is even worse than trying to break his leg. The captain of the Uruguay national team, Diego Lugano, said exactly this: that Evra was breaking all football codes. I think Evra made a huge human mistake, and I can see he is getting away with it, which aggravates me a big deal and is the motivation I had to took the pains of reading the 115 pages of the **** the FA offered the world. I don't understand why Evra did what he did; I do not understand how come he suddenly became so hatred towards a fellow player --especially since Suarez does not seem to have done anything outside what could be consider normal exchanges in any football match --some winding up, some insulting, etc. For us South Americans, football is a GAME, not a High Morals public school or something like that. You need to keep things that happen in the field confined to that dimension, because football IS A GAME. To some extent, players are actors in a public performance. And they are, of course, not serious representatives of the public morals making display of ideal ethics of a given society. They should not be judged on those absolute grounds. It looks to me like the case of those members of primitive theatrical plays that would jump into the stage to defend the actress being assaulted by the villain...
I perceive a self-righteous attitude in everything surrounding Suarez's case in England that, to some extent, is out of proportion--to the extent is is almost hilarious. Now, making some normal events on a football pitch part of a public discussion on racism and using Suarez as a weapon on that discussion (basically, making Suarez himself a sort of a bomb-man that has been detonated, destroying Suarez's image) is disgusting, at least to me.
Maybe the best thing would be to negotiate with the FA a way that, after a calculated and silent appeal, the penalty would end up being reduced a little bit, and on the other hand the player and Liverpool would issue a strong statement saying that 1) it has been stated by the FA and by Evra that Suarez is obviously not racist (quoting the FA paragraphs that say that), 2) that it was not the intention of Suarez to offend Evra, or to compromise Liverpool reputation in the battle against racism, and 3) that Luis Suarez will make an extra effort to participate and help even more in campaigns against racism.
After that, Luis should take the ban, get some rest, and come back for a great final half of the season for Liverpool. He can still do a lot of good to Liverpool and himself, and I guess that this could help him out learning a lesson about how careful you need to be while in such an visible public position. Probably the rivals would start respecting him even more after they see he accepted the penalty and they start perceiving how out of proportion all this issue has grown. People are noble after all, and I am sure many players will feel sympathetic for Luis.
This scapegoating of Suarez might end up integrating him even more definitely into British football culture, which I don't think would be a bad outcome at all for him --and might help British culture, after it has vented all its anger and prejudice, to take a step in the direction of understanding foreign cultures a little bit more --and start laughing a little bit more about football and what is at stake in it. No wonder it is South American players, used to consider football just a game you play for fun where you intend to defeat your rival through invention and, yes, some level of "cheating", among the ones that are bringing the most imaginative and creative ways of playing into England fields. Or isn't a good dribbling a form of deceiving (cheating) your rival?
