Rules and Regulations.

Bruce Springsteen has apparently said that Suárez was wrong to bite the Italian team member. Biting, declared the Boss, has no part in sport. Well, that should sort it all out then. I am quite relieved to hear that. 

And FIFA have banned him, Suárez, not Springsteen, from playing for four months. The decision means the Liverpool striker, who has also been fined £66,000, will miss the rest of Uruguay’s World Cup campaign and the start of the domestic season. He is banned from Uruguay’s next nine competitive matches in total, and from entering any stadium during this period. 

I wonder what football fans feel about one of their heroes being fined more than some of them earn in several years! Just a thought! 

On the other hand, Diego Maradona doesn't agree with the ban. He likened the "punishment" to sending him to Guantanamo. Rather an odd way of looking at things if you ask me, but I suppose if you are Diego Maradona you might see the world in your own special way. 

And then there are already the "copy cat" bitings! I have seen headlines about a seven year old boy who has bitten a member of the opposing kids' football team! Shock! Horror! So it goes. 

 Laws are funny things, whether they be football's laws or a country's laws. 

 Iceland has strict laws about what children can be called? I read about this in the newspaper. There are so few surnames there that all the numbers in the telephone directory are listed by first names rather than surnames. Mind you, there are few enough people for them to be able to do that. It might not work in other more populated countries. Christian names have to be able to be linguistically declined, Icelandic fashion. Consequently foreign names cannot be accepted, except possibly as second Christian names, because they don't adhere to the linguistic norms. This doesn't affect most people but it made the news because a child called Harriet is having difficulty getting an Icelandic passport. She has one Icelandic and one British parent and has had to get an emergency UK passport in order to go on the family holiday to France as the Icelandic authorities won't accept her name or, indeed, grant her a passport. How very odd! 

It's not as if she had one of the modern, invented names or was called after a London borough or something like that.