Ok, so I am from Argentina and I am making this question with all due respect, I don't want anybody to get angry or to bash american soccer culture in any way. It is just a perception that I have and I may be wrong: Why you all seem to get so terribly annoyed with diving? When I say this I mean a lot more annoyed than anybody else. Of course no one likes diving, me neither, but why is it that Americans seem to get infuriated about it? Like they literally can't stop talking about it when it happens, at least that's my impression on the internet. As I said, no one likes diving, but I literally don't see anybody else complain as much. Even European countries don't make such a big deal. What's worse is that there seems to be lots of racist people who bash on us South Americans for the attitudes of some players and call us cheaters when in fact lots of european countries do the same and don't judge them with the same bar. As I said, I am asking out of genuine curiosity and I am not looking for any animosity whatsoever. I just think that even though diving is bad the way americans react to it is also immature.
There's a lot to this, and it would be tough to sum it up in one post. But I think the majority of it is that American sports fans tend to like toughness. They like the hard-hitting nature of American football, the physical brutality of hockey, the intensity of basketball -- a "play through pain" mentality. And since soccer, up until the last couple of decades, was basically an afterthought in this country, it was easy for people who didn't pay close attention to it to label the sport as "soft." And diving all over the place like you've been shot by a sniper looks horrible compared to running backs getting hammered by linebackers and then popping right back up for more. As for the racial component you mentioned -- I don't buy that part. There may be a small percentage for whom that applies, but most people who hate diving don't discriminate. Diving is a plague -- unless your team gets a crucial penalty, and it's just crafty.
Yes, probably is due to the different mindset in mentality with the countries that grow up watching soccer whereas in the US the main sports have very different values and dinamic. About the racism, I am not saying all of them are but it surely exists. For example on Reddit soccer during the World Cup there were lots of commentaries all the time about the south americans being cheaters but when England tried to score while croatian players were celebrating a goal it was seldom discussed and even there were posts deleted about that incident. Another example, in World Cup 2014 I remember almost everyone was against Argentina because we supposedly play violent football even though Argentina was one of the teams with less fouls commited in the entire tournament!!! However it seems that data doesn't matter and some people are just prejudiced about us.
It's always been odd to me how we Americans have zero problem with "taking a charge" in basketball but...... I think American soccer fans regularly overreact against diving because the mainstream sports media in this country has a history of trying to emasculate men's soccer. It's not as bad as it used to be, but you still get the American narrative that "real football" involves helmets, pads, and "bone crushing" tackles while soccer is a pinko-commie sport for sissies...
Slightly different cultural attitude about sports. I'm also a huge hockey fan, and diving infuriates fans there as well, oftentimes regarding plays that aren't even that bad compared to the blatant examples of diving in soccer. Personally I can understand a well-timed dive to get a scoring chance, but I do admit to getting annoyed at some of the general over-dramatics in soccer (someone takes a bump at midfield, log-rolls, pounds the ground in agony, receives medical treatment, and is back to running full speed one minute later).
And those incidents of obvious faking get a disproportionately huge amount of a media attention here. I know quite a few people here who had precisely two opinions about the last World Cup: They wanted the underdog (Croatia) to win the final; and Neymar is a diving drama queen.
This is a true story. A few years ago, I was attending a Columbus Blue Jackets game. Which is a frequent occurrence for me. I was sitting in the upper bowl in the end zone at the opposite end of the ice from where the play was taking place. A Blue Jacket had the puck deep in his own zone, and was starting to skate out. An opponent, forechecking, was pressuring him from behind. He was tapping him with the stick a little, and eventually, it found its way between the CBJ player's legs, but it was on the ice surface, not touching him. My guy flopped to the ice like a fish, and the referee's arm immediately went up. The whole crowd started cheering, assuming we were going on the power play. I immediately said "that's a dive." Sure enough, the diver gets sent to the box, and instead of a power play, it's a penalty kill. The whole crowd loses its mind, furious at the injustice. But the guy beside me, dumbfounded, looks at me and says "how in the world did you call that?" My response? "I'm a soccer fan. I know a goddamn dive when I see one."
One other reason for Americans' attitude toward diving: a lot of our soccer culture comes from England, which is natural because of shared language. And if there's one place in Europe that hates diving, it's England. Not surprisingly, English football culture also especially values toughness and "getting stuck in." As for Argentina's reputation: I think it's more likely because the World Cup is such a massive stage that a single famous (or infamous) player can give an entire country a lasting reputation. Until Messi came along, Argentina's reputation was tainted in many people's minds by Maradona's off-field antics.
Diving is as stupid as can be. It goes against the grain of American culture. You say no one likes diving but I have read pieces defending it in Latin American countries. It's cultural and not racist. And to be blunt, any culture that accepts, promotes or glorifies this in any way deserves all the ridicule it gets.
This question should be addressed to the English. Diving is seen as cheating over there and there's no tolerance of cheating in the English media. Everyone should play like gentlemen. If you wave an invisible yellow card at the ref to try and get someone booked the commentators won't tolerate it. The ironic thing of course is that some of the greatest exponents of cheating have been English, whether it's diving like Michael Owen or intimidating referees like Tony Adams.
Because it's cheating, that's why. I think not being able to understand why people react badly to cheating is immature.
That is precisely the point. Just to add to that, English refereeing accepts a lot more rough contacts than that would be the case in continental Europe or South America. As such, there is a true cultural divide here. It was particularly obvious during the Colombia vs England game at last world cup. Colombians were really surprized how rough England was playing and as a consequence were trying to avoid contacts simply to not get hurt, which was perceived by English folks as "diving". Obviously there is a true difference between a true dive with the intent to mislead the referee and just a dive to avoid getting hurt, but generally English people tend to consider both the very same as just "cheating". Meanwhile, a dude doing a rough tackle that would bring the legs with the ball would never be called a "cheater", even if it was fully intentional to do so. Many English people would even consider it shouldn't be whistled at all as long as the ball was touched first.
It's the puritanical sense of right and wrong that has its roots in England and other parts of northern Europe. Puritanical: believing or involving the belief that it is important to work hard and control yourself. I'm from the north of England originally, and my grandmother was Presbyterian, so my puritanical gene is strong. Some examples: If there are two lanes of traffic approaching a stop sign for instance, and one lane is empty, it's considered unfair or impolite to drive to the front of the empty lane. Instead you're expected to join the back of the lane full of traffic. Most people in the UK seem to consider private medical insurance unfair or cheating. My father has had medical insurance for 60 years and never used it and that's fairly typical. If you're ill and your NHS doctor can't see you for a week, you wait a week. I've heard that many people in a certain east European country don't have a problem with the use of performance enhancing drugs, arguing it's no different from using the latest coaching techniques or in the case of a runner, shoe technology. Different values, that's all.
It is cheating, but so is knowingly tackling a guy illegally with the goal of causing him physical pain so he will act differently for the rest of the game. In the case of diving we all scream and yell and get on our high horses, while the case of the other we all clap and say "he showed passion", even though it could cause serious, possible career ending injury, and is essentially bullying. I am not saying for a second I like diving. It's an annoying part of the game that I wish the leagues would do more to stamp out. Specifically using retrospective punishment. But that still wouldn't end the debate because there is so much grey area in what constitutes a dive. A lot of people already pointed out our links and shared cultural links to Britain and the British ideas of "Sportsmanship", where trying to con a referee is the worst thing you can do, much worse than trying to break an opponents leg. But another reason Americans make such a big deal about is for most Americans their only exposure to soccer is the World Cup. So they aren't used to and desensitized to diving. So when people see it, including the wider sports media, they are surprised by it and it becomes a talking point. Even though I personally think it's about the dullest debate in sports.
A lot of Americans who aren't soccer fans think that diving in soccer has to do with a lack of toughness. They don't get that the reason behind it is what a huge effect on the outcome of the game any one call by the referee can have in a low-scoring sport.
I think for a couple of reasons... 1) It is what the main stream media has attached onto as something that makes football less appealing. Strike up a conversation with most typical USA sports fans who don't like/support soccer and you will hear a-> USA soccer sucks/is a joke b-> too much diving. 2) I think MLS has less diving when compared to other leagues, so I think it generally annoys people when you play against or watch another team who is flopping all over the field. Either way, I don't like it for my own reasons. I think it takes away from the flow of the game, and it is honestly annoying. I can't wait for the day that FIFA finally starts penalizing it, either during the game or after with VAR, and people stop taking unnecessary dives. And yes, I understand flopping can draw a card, but what official in their right mind is going to hand them out in a big game? Almost none, because it is much easier to call the penalty or foul then it is to say to Neymar "no you flopped, here is your 2nd yellow, get off."
A dive is a willful intent to cheat, and as such is often taken as a sign that the player can't succeed lawfully so they have to use underhanded means. This is different from, say, a hard tackle where the player isn't trying to cheat but in the heat of the moment things happen. FWIW, I lump in players who routinely foul aggressively as the same - They can't win on pure talent so they stretch the rules as best as possible. All to the detriment of the game and the fan.
Almost equally as bad is over-embellishment trying to con the referee. 2 players get face to face and they (lightly bump heads.) One player goes down clutching his face writhing in pain to try to get the other red carded. rolling 6 times when fouled (foul or not.) Or taking an arm lightly to the face, and falling, etc. While not diving, and contact was made, the conning bothers me just as much as the diving. And yes, some cultures are more guilty than others.
Many in England are hypocrites when it comes to cheating, and often overtly racist about it. If a South American player did something like this you'd never hear the end of it. In a WC no less: Here's another example a typical English "tough guy": . Deception is a part of the game, and that includes trying to fool the ref sometimes. And yes, it happens in "American" sports too:
There's some good points being made here, and I hope I can add something that's worthwhile. It may or may not be, but here's my effort. US Men's soccer has not been especially successful thus far. There are a lot of details that could be given to support this, but let's just say the US Men's team needs to be better than it is. It's never been as good as the US would like for it to be. US Women's soccer is dominant. It sort of always has been. The US Women's team is always expected to win against everyone. There might be situations where the US Women have a 55% chance of winning instead of 95%, but they're never the underdog. The US Women do not dive. Women's soccer in general is pretty much free of diving. It is not a thing. That is how the women do it, and we respect them for that. This is on the radar of US soccer fans because of the dominance of the US Women, while in other parts of the world- South America included- the women's team is not going to have a history of dominance or of getting the kind of attention that the men's team does. The women don't dive, that much is the same, but it matters much less. In the US, it matters a lot more. The US Women's team shows us what sustained success looks like while being almost entirely free of diving, and we can't get ourselves to imagine a Men's National Team that achieves success through diving when they're standing right next to a Women's team that does it the right way. This is so intuitive for us that we probably don't put it together in this explicit manner on a regular basis. But when we do start thinking about it, we just might point to some of the egregious examples of diving in the history of whichever other men's national team and wonder, Have you noticed that your women's national team doesn't do this? Win or lose, they would never do this thing but there goes one of your men flopping like a fish. Why doesn't this register, why wouldn't it matter to you? That's what might be on our minds. It is for me, anyway. Oh, and when it comes to Argentina, I think of it as a 90% white country where nearly everyone is comfortably more than half European- usually a lot more than that- so I'm looking at a country of mostly European people that speak Spanish and has a distinct regional culture. Messi is a god among men, and Argentina has a largely enviable history of excellence in the sport although there are some spots where Argentina has not quite been able to get the silverware they were hoping for. Brazil's national team has been more successful and often at the expense of Argentina and I'm sorry about that. The perception of racism in this particular context is a bit mystifying to me, and that's something I usually wouldn't say but the only reason I say it now is because I myself have almost entirely European ancestry. My family doesn't have a history of speaking Spanish as a native language, but other than that the only real difference between me and someone from Argentina is location and culture. I can't help but approach this as a white person of European ancestry (outside Europe) who's very likely talking to another white person of European ancestry (also outside Europe) and this whole general climate of racism idea makes me say Really? Okay, so there probably is something there, but is that the right way to describe it? Maybe it's not quite that; despite the difference in language and culture it's entirely likely that we are (pretty much) the same race, national identity notwithstanding.
@RetVaCoach There was no need to bring up racism. You're in Soccer in the USA, not an English forum. Unless you have evidence of Americans feeling differently about soccer players diving based on the player's race, you shouldn't have said that. Without quoting so much of the post, Mmmcounts has a good point if many Americans thought about how good our WNT is without diving, but my guess is that most Americans who complain about diving are not doing it based on comparing men to women who don't dive.
There is a big difference between flopping in a basketball game that will be 74-72 and diving in a soccer game that may be decided solely by the dive. Don’t agree that the WNT success has to do with diving, not diving etc. nor that MNT players take their cue from that style of play. Similar to US dominance in basketball and baseball, I thought our dominance in women’s soccer was due more to adoption of the sport before many other countries. I’m not as aware of when girls youth soccer became common in Europe and South America but I thought it became a big thing in the US at least a decade (or two) before it took hold elsewhere.