Diving has now become such a hot topic even the vice president of FIFA Jim Boyce has got involved and had his say. He says diving is nothing less than cheating and has become a cancer within the game, and I don’t disagree with him. Diving and ‘simulation’ has been commonplace in the game for a good twenty years now with millions of examples of such behaviour across every league in world football. Strangely enough with all the diving that has happened (remember Rivaldo at the world cup, Klinsmann, Rooney, Gerrard, Young, Welbeck, Pires, Viera, Ronaldo, Pepe, Bale three days ago, the list could go on and on and on) Boyce only named one player – Luis Suarez.
I’m not defending Suarez against diving allegations, at times he’s very clearly guilty, but I am saying the coverage he gets is not in proportion to that which other players receive for the same actions and it would be easy to see why he could develop a victim complex. It’s not hard to work out why Brendan Rodgers chose to defend his player when other managers haven’t had to despite their men conducting themselves in a similarly unsporting manner.
Boyce says there should be retrospective action against divers and initially I agreed with him, but should that happen I wonder just where it could lead. There is plenty of cheating that happens within football that is not diving related and how can you punish one kind and ignore another?
When a corner is taken if an attacker can’t run and head the ball into the net because his shirt is being held and the referee misses it is that cheating? It’s a deliberate attempt to gain an advantage over an opponent using methods that are not within the rules of the game. Does this mean we need to hand out bans to defenders every time this occurs? Let’s be honest, diving is wrong and we don’t like it, but defenders combat strikers using ways that are outside of the laws of the game more often than strikers use them against defenders.
If two players go in for the ball and it bounces out of play off the shins of one man and he knows this, but still appeals for the throw in is he not attempting to con the referee into giving his team a decision they should not get? This is also cheating and trying to fool the match officials, should we ban players for this?
Sticking with Suarez incidents as they are topical and fresh in the memory, when a defender fouls an attacker in the box and a penalty is not awarded, has he cheated? Against Norwich, Man Utd and Arsenal Suarez was denied the chance to shoot at goal because of a challenge from a defender that was not within the rules of the game, does this mean the defenders cheated and should be banned?
Deliberate handball is cheating, it is seeking to gain an advantage doing something that is against the rules of football. Do we need to ban everyone who commits a deliberate handball offence?
I, like most football fans, have been saying for as long as I can remember that diving is cheating and we don’t want it in the game, but can we really blame the players for doing it? As the law stands if a referee feels a player has dived it’s a yellow card offence so if a player chooses to try to con the official he knows the risk and decides it’s worth it. If a game is level with a few minutes to go and a player hasn’t been booked, and defenders have been handling him all game using methods not within the rules, then why shouldn’t he try to win the match for his team in whatever way he can?
Then there is us fans. We all accept our own players diving, we may say we don’t like it but if we win a game 1-0 thanks to a dodgy penalty we take it all day long. Evertonians hate Suarez with a passion and regularly call him a diver but if you offered them a 1-0 derby win thanks to a penalty when one of their forwards has cheated they would take it. As would fans of any team.
The rule makers need to come up with something that will deter players from diving, and retrospective suspensions based on video evidence is a good way to go, but if they’re going to do this then all forms of cheating need to be dealt with. And when it comes to reporting incidents a sense of proportion and perspective should be applied, but I doubt this will ever happen in my lifetime.
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