I heard this one on KSFO yesterday and I figured I would throw it at the fanime braintrusat. I'm on my cell phone so I'll give you my $0.02 when I get home.
Let's say you were the coach of like the US FIFA team and you had to play aginst North Korea....
If you know for a fact (and had proof) that the leader of North Korea. (Correct me if I'm worng Kim Jong Il isn't dead yet) would kill/execute the players, coaches, trainers, etc if they lost and returned home w/o any victories, would you throw the match on order to save lives? Would it be your moral duty to take the loss in order for those men's lives and possibly their familes lives not to be forfit?
If the decision would affect only me, then yes I would. Since it affects the entire team, I would have to bring it up with the whole team.
Even the most diehard (strategic pun? not intended) fans and players of anything realize that a game or sport isn't worth an actual life. Of course I would not play, or let my players play, if their lives were on the line.
I'm pretty sure FIFA would do something about it way before KJI has a say, anyway.
Well, we are talking about the US soccer team, though. Of course we'd come to expect they'd lose in an international setting anyway, unfortunately.