There's levels isn't there.
Thing is pro sports people are paid to win and it's been their full time job and 24/7 obsession for their whole lives. We've all met ex pros but it's hard to get your head around how psychotically competitive they must be.
I think they'll take every tiny little possible advantage they can, and keep pushing the line to see where the line is. Because if they're not, you can bet the guy on the next team is.
Then there's a spectrum between a keeper taking an extra ten seconds to take a goal kick late in a tight match, and running a team-wide, sophisticated doping ring for a decade where you transfuse pints of your own blood jacked up with cloned hormones and steroids, mid-race, to give yourself inhuman powers and dominate the sport for 10 years (admittedly, where everyone else is doing the same thing).
I have to say, the speed, athleticism and intensity top footballers can maintain now compared to 10/20/30 years ago doesn't quite pass the sniff test for me in the same way that watching the endurance levels of top tennis players isn't just having a Red Bull before a match. You watch pressing teams like Leeds or Liverpool and they can maintain a full-on sprint for nearly 90 minutes. Reminds me of that old cycling quote, "You can't ride the Tour de France on bread and mineral water." Makes for an amazing spectacle though, and, like tennis, where's the incentive for governing bodies to look under the carpet if the sport has never been more rich, popular or higher quality.
Is winning more important than winning fairly? Do players sleep better at night if they've won fair and square? I doubt that Maradona, or Materazzi, or Sergio Ramos & Pepe, or every Uruguayan player ever
won't look at pictures of trophies they've won through dark arts because they're ashamed of it - in the end, their job is to win stuff.
In a way, I sort of agree with Thierry Henry in that it's sort of the job of the rule-makers to define - and enforce - where the line is between gamesmanship and illegal. It's embarrassing to watch but players would argue that going down in the box on the slightest tap is just making it easier for the referee to make a decision because the game happens so fast. Neymar takes it a bit far like