Soccer Ethics & Sportsmanship

From youth to elite play, soccer places a premium on sportsmanship and fair play. Team captains support sportsmanship by exchanging team and national pennants before Champion’s League and World Cup matches, and both starting teams shake hands. Iran’s starters, in fact, presented the U.S. with white flowers before a 1998 World Cup match to indicate that political friction would not play a role in the match. Your team can look to examples of ethics and sportsmanship found in the history of soccer.

History

Soccer rules historian and author Stanley Lover notes the importance of fair play embedded in the rules of soccer ever since the first organizational meeting for the sport in a London tavern in 1863. The game’s rules are designed to not only to encourage fitness but to develop desirable qualities of character such as self-discipline, responsibility and a sense of justice, Lover writes in “Soccer Rules Explained.” Law 12 of the Laws of the Games lists what constitutes fouls, or unfair play. Individual leagues add codes of conduct that call for respect for opponents and modesty in victory and dignity in defeat.

Application

Leagues from local recreation programs to the World Cup stress ethics and sportsmanship so that soccer can create “warm and lasting friendships” and make the game more pleasurable for all, writes Lover in “Key Fair Play Partners.” As a player, you can avoid playing in a careless, reckless or violent manner, refuse to retaliate when fouled and show concern for injured opponents. Team captains can work to curb the impulses of players likely to play roughly and encourage goal scorers to keep their celebrations short and dignified, Lover advises. The National Federation of State High School Associations encourages high school coaches to exchange cordial greetings and set an example for players.

Case Studies

Soccer players routinely kick the ball out of bounds when a teammate or opponent is injured and the referee has not whistled play to a halt. When the opponent takes a throw in, good sportsmanship dictates that it go back to the other team, often the goalkeeper, in the interest of returning the ball to the team that had the ball. West Ham striker Paolo di Canio won a FIFA Fair Play award for going even further. At a 2000 game, he caught the ball to stop play rather than score an easy goal when the opposing keeper for Everton lay injured, leaving the net open. Similarly, in 2005, an Ajax player accidentally scored when returning the ball to the opposing goalkeeper for Cambuur, a rival Dutch team. The Ajax team allowed Cambuur to have a free goal to rectify the unintended goal.

Exceptions

Diving -- falling to the ground faking a foul or injury -- poses a challenge to soccer ethics and sportsmanship deplored especially by American observers of the game. Deliberate handballs also violate sportsmanship tenets. Examples of deliberate handballs include Diego Maradona’s infamous “hand of god” goal for Argentina in the 1986 World Cup and Luis Saurez’s block of a Ghana shot with both hands in the 2010 World Cup. The referee did not disallow Maradona’s goal, while Saurez received a red card and missed the next game.