Nearly every week now, the main focus of our dissection of the weekend’s football action is concerned with simulation; i.e. diving.
The main culprit, in the English Premier League at least, is the Uruguayan striker, Luis Suarez. His dive against Stoke City last Sunday was a blatant attempt to earn Liverpool a penalty, even though no contact had been made by a Stoke defender at the moment of his acrobatic tumble.
It is a very sensitive subject upon these shores, especially when the antagonist is a foreigner, bringing his perceived foreign ways to our honest and upstanding League of footballers. However, the most heinous act of simulation from last weekend was committed by a Welshman; Tottenham’s Gareth Bale falling flat on his face to try to get Brad Guzan sent off even though the Villa goalkeeper clearly never touched him.
The outrage has been so severe that UEFA deemed it necessary to convene with a “Leaders in Football” conference this week, with the panel including ex-referee Pierluigi Collina and Michael Owen. The pair discussed a penalty that the Italian Official awarded for England at the 2002 World Cup when Owen was brought down in the box by an Argentine defender. The conclusion of this was Owen admitting that the contact was not strong enough to bring him to ground but that he did not decide to dive of his own volition.
Collina agreed, that if a defender is foolish enough to tackle an attacker in the penalty area and not make any contact with the ball, then it is clearly a foul, regardless of whether the attacker could have maintained his balance or not.
We do not like to think of English players “conning” referee’s in this country but the truth is that the habit has been around long before the increased influx of foreign players in the early 1990’s. Manchester City’s Francis Lee was notorious for luring defenders into bad tackles and subsequently “diving” to win penalties in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s.
In Spanish and in South American footballing culture, to win your team a penalty by deceiving a defender into tackling you is not viewed as cheating or “diving”, but instead it is valued as an intelligent piece of skill that could potentially settle a very tight and important match.
There is a very insidious form of xenophobia at play in the English media, when they single out Suarez as a scapegoat for “simulation” while ignoring home-grown cheaters such as Bale and Ashley Young, who go to ground without contact on a consistent basis.
The glaringly obvious answer to our current predicament is – retrospective video evidence – to be used as a means of punishment; we can all clearly see when someone has dived under no touch from the opposition, so let’s give theses cheaters a 4 game ban after the event. This simple measure would almost overnight guarantee a 100% reduction in players conniving to mislead the referee.
I can understand why people don’t like any form of “diving”, even when there has been contact made, it stems from the roots of football in England, which is Working-Class culture. People can relate to a good strong tackle, even if it results in a foul, because it shows commitment to the cause.
