A word or two about cheating and how to stop it.

In the aftermath of Luis Suárez hand-ball in the Ghana game some pretty ridiculous things have been said. The worst, in my opinion --expressed by his coach--, is that what he did wasn't cheating. That by doing something in the rule book and being duly punished amounts to playing within the rules. Suarez and Diego Forlan have come out and said that he made the best save of the tournament.

No. That's not a save. That's cheating. When you speed on the highway, you're cheating. If you get caught, you're still cheating. That's why they pull you over. Because you cheated. Now, if noone was killed due to your speeding, you might get a reasonable fine and think that cheating wasn't such a bad thing. If you were drunk and if your were going very fast and if you took out a bunch of school kids crossing the road at the time, guess what? The consequences lead to a different punishment. And when you fess up to it in court and say you're proud of what you did they hopefully lock you up for longer. And when they lock you up they do it to punish you. But they also do it so the next person on the road gets the message that there's proportional punishment awaiting your sins.

This cheater thinks he's going to get away with it, because he thinks he's found a small loophole. And that's what this is: a loophole. Noone handballs a certain goal because they know they'll be sent off and most likely be down a goal as well. But, actually, there's no loophole in the law. A straight red card can always be judged after the fact to determine its severity. It's the regulatory body's job to step in and tell footballers that this sort of cheating is indeed a serious offense. That in the history of handballs this will go down as the one that took out a bunch of school children crossing the road. He should be banned from the next World Cup, plain and simple. 2 years for the act and 2 years for his and his country's thumbing their noses in the face of the law.

And in a moral, impossible universe, Tevez should be suspended for knowingly scoring an offside goal. Ditto the German keeper who saw Lampard's goal cross the line. And if you ask me whether I wouldn't have done likewise--er, no I wouldn't. Just for the impossible, blissful, moral superiority I would feel over these other losers. Winning's just not that important. Or is it.

It's not the severity of the punishment that is the real deterrent to crime, it's the certainty. Fifa's uncertainty in so many key areas of the game makes for plenty of talking points. But a clearer rule book enforced by video evidence and appropriate after-the-fact consquences is long overdue.

Suspending Suarez for the final and beyond would be a small step in the right direction.