World Cup: Luis Suarez proves to be a handy guy for Uruguay

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Luis Suarez’s two-handed stop of Dominic Adiyiah’s header in the waning seconds of extra time Friday broke a soccer rule and helped propel Uruguay to a penalty-shootout win over Ghana and a berth in the World Cup semifinals. But did it break a moral code as well?

Some fans and reporters apparently thought so. But Milovan Rajevac, Ghana’s Serbian-born coach, was as gracious as any human being could be under such circumstances and denied Suarez cheated.

‘All I can say is that’s football,’ he said. ‘Everything happened so fast. It really would have been a fairytale if it had ended well for us.’

Ghana, the last hope of Africa in the first World Cup played on the continent, was pushing to try to win the game in the final seconds of extra time when a scramble in front of the net caught Uruguayan keeper Fernando Muslera out of position. So Suarez moved to the goal line, where he first stopped a Stephen Appiah shot with his knee then put his arms up to swat Adiyiah’s header away with both hands.

That earned Suarez a red card and Ghana a penalty kick, something the Africans excelled at in this tournament. But this time Asamoah Gyan’s shot skipped off the top of the crossbar, sending the game to a shootout, which Uruguay won.

‘Cheating? No,’ Uruguay Coach Oscar Tabarez said. ‘Cheating is far too strong a word.’

Striker Diego Forlan, who scored Uruguay’s only goal on a second-half free kick, said he thought Suarez simply reacted when he saw the ball coming toward him and wasn’t intending to do anything shady. Tabarez agreed.

‘I think it was instinctive,’ he said. ‘The player instinctively stopped the ball. When Suarez had that handball he didn’t know that Ghana was going to miss the penalty kick.’

Or two more in the shootout.

Even Gyan, who broke down and had to be consoled by teammates after the game, wasn’t blaming Suarez.

‘It’s hard luck. We had the opportunity to win this game, but that is football,’ Gyan told reporters. ‘I would say he’s a hero now in his own country, because the ball was going in and he held it with his hand. He is a hero now.’

-- Kevin Baxter in Johannesburg, South Africa