What's the difference? Surely saving your team is gaining an advantage?
I think that's more like 'keeping it level' by committing a 'crime' you know will be punished. It's illegal and it's punishable either way, and saving your team by doing it (like Suarez) brings obvious and known punishments... The thing that sets it apart from handballing in the opposition box in order to score for me is that there's no air of deception involved in palming it off the line - it's a clear handball that you can't get away with and you know before you do it what would happen if you ever did do it. Strictly for the matter of calling one thing cheating and the other thing not, handballing in the opposition box in order to score bears a possibility of getting away with it, and you'd only do it if you thought you could get away with it, which for me is the cheating part. You handball in their box with the intention of getting away with it and scoring; you wouldn't do it if you knew it was impossible to get away with like palming off the line is.
I think palming it off the line in desperation is more human instinct than cheating, and I have held that view since the World Cup. Dives are often premeditated, how could Luis have know that was going to happen? He was punished, missed the Semi, Ghana got a penalty and fucked it up, their fault.
like i've been trying to say, palming off the line is a foul for which there exists a punishment, just like a poor tackle is, and you wouldn't call a poor tackle 'cheating', you'd just call it a bad tackle and the player would receive his punishment. you wouldn't call palming it off the line 'cheating', you'd just call it a handball and the player would receive the punishment which has been designed for it. i personally call handballing in the oppo. box cheating because you do it thinking you can get away with it, otherwise there'd be no reason to do it.
sorry, i drone on and on and on saying the same thing over and over sometimes...
