Diving is killing the game > New soccer fans

Players don't dive because they are hurt or injured. It's not because they have no tolerance for pain. It's because the rules of soccer do not allow severe physical contact. The diving is just to draw a foul. Not because they are hurt.

In rugby or American football, the rules of the game allow for severe physical contact. There is no incentive to dive. Hence, players don't dive. But I am sure players in those sports use other forms of gamesmanship to give their team an advantage.

This is true in any competitive activity.

Why do cricketers appeal to the umpire even when they know the batsman is not out?

Why does the Quarterback in American Football whine to the official for a late hit flag even if the defensive lineman just brushed him slightly?

Why hedge fund managers manipulate derivatives and exotics even knowing they are unsound?

People will always exploit the rules to the maximum to give themselves an advantage.

I am not defending diving. Just saying its a result of the rules of the sport, and modern's society's culture of emphasizing winning at all cost.

In my opinion the only solution would be to reduce the incentive for diving. In the player's mind, if he knows that diving will give his team an advantage, but later, on video review, he will be suspended for 3 games and fined a lot of money, he may not be inclined to diving.

The problem is how would you make video reviews fool-proof? For the obvious and blatant cases, it is easy. But what about the cases that are not so obvious? What happens when even after extensive video analysis, you can't tell that the contact genuinely caused the player to lose his balance and stumble or he was exaggerating it? You need to make sure the video analysis is fool proof for all circumstances.

What's not to say that players will work on more "realistic" diving simulations then?

So in conclusion, either change the rules of soccer and make full contact tackles legal like rugby or American football, or change the predilection of modern society to win at all costs.

Neither of which are easy.

 

Why not take a old-school approach against diving. Instruct the refs to punish the divers by not calling clear fouls against them. Like someone breaks the leg of Pipo Inzaghi and the ref simply ignores it. Also the players must be harder toward the divers, just like the guy who ********ed up Eduardo Da Silva from Arsenal.

 

You could just show them this picture

 

Just a comment on this discussion...

In terms of athletes not playacting in sports that allow severe physical contact, check out hockey. Players dive all the time to draw penalties.

 

Ice Hockey or Field Hockey?

 

I grew up playing ice hockey. I can't comment on field hockey.

 

Diving is not the biggest sin in football. When you look at the bigger picture, you'll see that cynical tackling is a far worse threat to the game--how many times have we seen attacking players injured and good attacks snuffed out through cynical fouling? Diving isn't a pretty thing, I admit, but primarily the creative players will simulate to get defenders cautioned so they can go about their work of scoring goals and actually playing. FIFA have bigger problems right now than players looking to get a free-kick here or there.

 

They don't. They dive to cheat and get an unfair advantage.

You talk as if diving and faking injury is regarded as a necessary evil by those who do it. It's cheating, plain and simple, and they play for it.

 

When a striker is clear on goal and a defender goes through his back, it's a foul--and a far worse form of cheating. Anglo audiences have the most inflated and ridiculously moralistic views on diving. Is it better to break a player's leg than simulate? I guess because it's more "manly," the former is better. Diving is not killing the game. It's a reaction to the cynical fouling in the game.

 

The most creative players in history (Pele, Best, Matthews, Maradona, Cryuff, Garrincha, etc.) did very little if any diving. Players without a tenth of their talent have been diving all over the pitch this past month.

 

Why do those who defend divers always believe those who don't think fouling is OK?

How does disliking diving mean anyone would think fouling, particularly seriously fouling, is OK.

I know that's th same point as I made above, but it's such a fundamental point that I think it's worth stating twice. It's just a dreadful strawman argument.

No it's not. It's a reaction to the increased chances of gaining a benefit from such cheating. With the laws as they are, with free kicks and penalties given for "contact", however slight, it's far easier to try and win a free kick or penalty than actually try and score.

If your theory was true then attackers would only dive when under what they regard as unfair physical pressure. Given that the same players dive regardless of who they are playing, what's their excuse for diving against non-physical teams?


Why, for example, do players roll around on the floor clutching their face after the slightest contact? Is it because they are trying to protect themselves from aggressive players? No. It's because they think there's a good chance that if the ref will send the player off.

 

It's obviously true that players dive to gain an advantage. What's far more common than diving, though, is embellishing--making a foul look worse than it was in fact (viz. Robben today).

I agree with both you and antonio that this is cheating and unfair, but this thread states that diving is the biggest sin in modern football and that it's "killing" the game. And yet no one has made that argument convincingly. Especially in light of some key missed calls, FIFA should be worried more about getting goal-line calls right and about its refereeing.

Again, diving isn't the biggest problem for the sport. When you see how tired and injured some of the players have been (and some of the key absences), and major calls flubbed, you realize that there are bigger problems than diving. It's just that Anglo audiences love to get moralistic about the evils of diving. It's a cultural attitude, not a serious argument about FIFA's priorities.

 

Theory: Diving is killing the game > New soccer fans
Reality: No, it isn't.

 

Bada-BING! Good post!

 

The days of brutal tackling is over. Things were far more dangerous for forwards 30-50 years ago and still diving was unheard of. When FIFA began to crack down on cynical fouling, diving began. I agree that fouling is worse as it can put a player's health and career in danger, but it's interesting that many of the teams which employed persistent fouling as a tactic turned to diving since FIFA began cracking down on it. Cheating of all kinds is killing the game.

 

I think they ought to have a special yellow card in the shape of an Oscar for diving. I also think the ref, ARs, and the fourth official should hold up score cards (3.1, 4.3, 2.0, 5.0, etc.) when a player dives, Maybe if they get the crap embarrassed out of them enough, they'll stop.



As far as it is killing the game, maybe not, but I have heard more than a few comments from some of my friends and co-workers who are casual soccer fans at best, that they believe diving takes a way from the game, and is a factor in them not being fans ("They flop around on the ground like they've been shot, and the other player wasn't anywhere near them! Bunch of pansies!").

 

Comme, there are a few points I want to make on this topic:

1. The lead post of the thread is overstated. Diving is neither killing soccer nor repelling new fans. The game remains enormously popular and, indeed, one could argue that diving has become a sort of quirk of the game that people love to hate, or at least love to talk about. So soccer is perhaps less fair and more interesting because of diving; but it hasn't become unpopular or 'dead' because of it.

2. We don't even know what we mean to say when we talk about diving. Today on many threads on BS people talked of Robben 'diving' in an attempt to get Bastos red-carded on the play that led to Holland's equalizer. But replays show Bastos missed the ball and nicked Robben's ankle on this play. In other words, Robben was fouled--he just embellished the severity of the foul by rolling around on the ground. Robben's acting might have been a bit distasteful, but Bastos wasn't challenging cleanly today and in fact Dunga subbed him before he got red-carded. The Brazilians, indeed, could have used some of Robben's acting to positive effect with Mark Van Bommel, who fouled all game long but never got cautioned. In some cases what people call diving is instead merely embellishment of a foul committed. These cases are minor sins in the sport taken in the larger picture.

3. True diving--players flopping to the ground under no contact at all--is admittedly disgusting, but more rare than the situations above which are routinely lumped together as 'diving'. How many times did we see real, all air belly-flops in this tournament and have they really ruined the games? De Rossi dove vs. Paraguay and the ref let play continue; today a Dutch player dove and rightly got a yellow card. There were several cases; all were embarrassing, but none as disruptive or influential to outcomes as goals scored yards offside (Tevez) or goals not awarded at all that should have been (Lampard, Edu). Because of its theatrical nature, we love to talk about diving. Giving evidence of its impact on games? A lot harder.

4. There is a strong cultural/ moralistic component to discussions of diving, which (generally) sees Anglo viewers speaking of it as cheating, unmanly, a disgrace, etc., and often enough, a practice brought off by foreigners (these discussions are never far from shots at Italian, Spanish, players). The tendency of UK fans to see diving as shocking can perhaps be explained by the English idea of soccer as sport rather than profession, but it's no longer possible to divide the world into countries that do and do not participate in diving: the EPL has its healthy share of diving, and some of its own players (Gerrard!) have flopped regularly to gain advantage.

5. In sum, diving is unpleasant and unsporting and referees should continue to punish it. But on balance, it's not killing soccer, deterring fans, and shouldn't be FIFA's #1 priority, either.

 

I agree. At least in the US, it's a big turnoff & I perfectly understand the revulsion Americans feel towards it when they "give the game a try", tune in and see these theatrics.

One of the big attractions of women's soccer is you don't see nearly this amount of diving.

Can't argue about its popularity so I suppose you can afford to be complacent about it. Nonetheless I wouldn't be so sure it doesn't repel new fans. I'm sure it does in the US.

It's an embarrassment to the sport pure and simple. Just because billions of other people aren't bothered enough by it because there are so many of you doesn't make it less of one.

 

Diving and embellishing both certainly do repel new fans.

I wrote elsewhere on another topic that currently there is a huge cultural battle in the United States between soccer fans, soccer haters, and a growing number of in-betweens who can still be swayed to either side. And the diving and embellishing aren't helping move those in-betweens into our club-- they are instead pushing them away. I know this because I work with a ton of them.

The Robben-apologist seems to forget at least one instance today where ZERO contact with a defender was made-- he jumped up to avoid a tackle, landed on the ground, and proceeded to act as if he might have to lose the leg below the knee after the match. What a disgrace. He's too talented to act like that.

 

Who cares? If it wasn't diving, fans old and new would just find something else about football to whine about.