The whole thing stinks. Nobody is defending him. He's guilty and deserves to be punished.
The major gripe is about us being punished for a crime he committed while playing for his country. There are clear lines for this. A player can be banned for domestic league games, but still play European or UEFA cup games. They can be banned for club and play internationals. So why is the new rule for him only, that punishes us in the process, more than it punishes him or his national team?
This is a sport, and it’s governed by a set of rules which are put in place for the betterment of that sport. When a player steps out of the tunnel and out onto the pitch they’re to obey those rules. If a player breaks those rules then they should be punished. So, quite clearly and quite rightly, Luis Suarez should be punished. For violent conduct. Because that’s what it is and nothing more. Just like a kick is. Or a punch is. Or a headbutt is. Or an unexpected and potentially life threatening forearm to the back of the head is (no matter how much you want to pretend like it didn’t happen, Wayne). A bite on the shoulder, though f*cking stupid, isn’t worse than any of these. It’s violent conduct, should be treated as such, and that’s that. FIFA, UEFA, our FA, none of them should get to make up the rules as they go along, and certainly not because of public pressure or rival supporter reaction, but that’s what appears to be happening. If it isn’t, then how come we’ve all been asking how long his ban’s likely to be? Shouldn’t we know? Isn’t it in those rules you’ve written?
People saying he has done it three times are missing the point, it doesn't matter if he has done it ten times. Unless he did it ten times in the same match he can only be charged with the one offence. Saying he has done it twice before so he deserves it is admitting he is being punished for three offences instead of just the one. Using the same logic if a player gets several red cards, by the time they get the third or fourth red card, as punishment they should expect the death sentence, after all, they've done it before.
Each offence should be treated as an incident on its own and punished accordingly. The punishment here is disproportionate to the offence, precisely because his priors are being used against him, because of media hysteria and his (fairly earned) poor reputation.
Anyway, the most sense I've seen spoken on the subject so far on RTE.
http://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/worldcup ... -response/
