kind of ironic that after a Scottish referee buys the dives bigtime from the German National Team at WC '02... Players for Scotlands national team are calling the Germans out for an inability to maintain balance when looked at http://www.foxsportsworld.com/content/view?contentId=1653880 & http://www.latimes.com/sports/socce...614049.column?coll=la-headlines-sports-soccer (2nd item)
When the refs stop rewarding dives, the germans, argentinians, italians, et.al. will stop doing it. I wait (in vain) for the day when the rules that are already there are enforced. That's when soccer will catch on in mainstream U.S.
Well, the past WC didn't teach the Italians anything. Their little diving game just taught them to kick Asian players out of their league, and accuse FIFA of some heavyduty fixing. I also remember the Germany-Camaroon WC game, disgraceful German diving in that one too.
Let's not be hypocritical, guys; if the US players could pull it off, we'd be doing it too. Anyone remember Waldo's attempted dive against T&T in qualifying for 98? Made me laugh out loud.
I never liked FIFA going after players for "bringing the game into disrepute." Kinda sounds to me like a rule made to avoid having to deal with legitimate complaints.
Might be nice if someone would do something about FIFA bringing the game into disrepute. When I complained about the diving at the World Cup, the Euros told me I didn't understand soccer, so I guess the Scottish don't either. I understand that it was a deliberate and disgustingly effective strategy based on their strength and our weakness on free kicks. They also didn't like that we were outplaying them at times and wanted to castrate our mojo. The ref shouldn't have bought it. He also shouldn't let Torsten Frings play volleyball in the box. It will be interesting to see how it goes in 2006.
How about Rivaldo's disgraceful, laughable display in WC02? What a complete weenie. As for Klinsmann - the display in the 90 final was ridiculous. However, he cleaned up his diving over the years, particularily when he played for Hotspurs. And give the guy some respect for being and all time great forward.
See that's the thing, I didn't think he actually dove on the 2nd yellow. He had an obvious dive a couple minutes before that, but I was pretty sure at the time that there was decent contact.