[scotch17]

Originally Posted by johan neeskens

Babel didn't dive either. A dive is only a dive when there's no contact. There was contact with Babel and truth of the matter is that 9 out of 10 referees give a penalty for such an incident. If you want to complain about cheating, I suggest you complain about the Brazilians.

If that's what you like to tell yourself at night, that's ok. It was technical enough to be a penalty, but we both know there were much more blatant penalties (on both sides) that were waved off.
By your description I assume you haven't seen the replay either. It's a textbook dive. Grade A. He could seriously get an emmy for that performance. Especially the way he clutched his chest (with absolutely no contact anywhere near there).
Minor shirt pulling is also not a "9 out of 10" call -- if it was, we would have seen 9 penalties throughout that game. It was called because he sold it. Maybe we should stop sending our players to Europe for football and start getting them some theater training. I'm afraid Kabuki is just too jerky of a movement to be convincing.

[vancity eagle]

I haven't seen the replay so I'm not making judgement on this incident, but I think over reacting to very minor contact is just as bad as diving to no contact at all, it is still cheating in my books, if the contact is not enough to put you on the ground, then keep your ass up and try to score, don't act like a little bitc$.