The Rational and the Irrational in the Game of Luck

    Football, the game of luck, is still glorifying some and humiliating others in the world cup tournament. Big football teams were let down and others had been sent home. Some famous advertisement market leading players finish the game by spitting on their spectator and others despicably or heroically succeed in violating the law of the game and referees fail to enforce it in the pitch.

    The most controversial act is the Uruguayan player’s goal-line handball in the dying seconds of extra-time of play that prevented a definite goal for Ghana. A red card was shown, a top-scoring player was sent off and a penalty was given to the opposing team which, if scored-unfortunately not, would have given them victory and a spot in a World Cup semi-final.

     The player’s in-box intended handball is definitely irrational. It is irrational because it violates the law of the game that requires severe punishment and deprives the opposing team from a long-awaited goal that, if scored, must have enabled them to set foot in the tournament semi-final. However, this act would seem rational if seen from another perspective. The player knew he could not stop his counterpart’s efforts with his head and so used his hands assuming the goalkeepers’ role as he explained afterwards. Was that act a clear-cut, blatant out-right cheating or professionalism that ought to be applauded?!

    Out of the measures of respectability, the player did what was required to keep his team in the context and there is no doubt if he did not handle the ball that way his team would have been sent home early. Out of values, the banned, rationally despised and irrationally glorified, act deprived the opposing team of the game goal just before the shoot-out that shattered their dreams of glory. The act of the player, either villain or hero, does simply show the correlation between the rational and the irrational in, even, the game of luck.