The Diving Dilemma

The World Cup extended it's reach to everyone regardless of their opinions towards soccer. From the casual fan to the fanatic, everywhere you turned you were surrounded by an developing story about Tim Howard or the Ghana players having their bonuses flown to Brazil, to name a few. As a result I found myself watching quite a few games with people who had some strong opinions about the beautiful game and let themselves be heard. Everything from, "this team is so soft" to "this isn't a real sport" was all attributed to the same thing: diving.

Embellishment, flopping, exaggerating, whatever you want to call it, it played a role in nearly every game, some more than others. I would always have to brace myself when Neymar or Arjen Robben went down screaming while their teammates bolted towards the referee. The rants that followed weren't annoying or unbearable until they got to one point: "I don't get how you like this sport".

I don't mind anyone complaining about diving because I despise it just as much as the next person. But when it starts seeping into overarching opinions about soccer it becomes difficult to deal with in more ways than one. There will always be players who spend more time rolling around on the field than others. Some teams are even notorious for diving to the point where it may even be stressed in training. If you don't believe look up "Italians practice flopping", it will be worth your time.

My point is that this has become a part of soccer culture and there's no foreseeable end to it. Gradually referees became more strict with their calls in an effort to protect players. It's not uncommon that you'll hear a commentator say "when we were playing that would've been a fair tackle" after a questionable slide challenge. Players are aware of this and will go to extreme measures in an attempt to force the refs hand.

So the next logical argument is that FIFA has to start instituting fines for these players to erase it from the game. The problem is that we have to remember this is FIFA we're talking about who are so corrupt themselves, what reason would they have to eliminate corruption in this area of the game? If you need further evidence you don't even have to leave this blog, just scroll down to the FIFA article. It's still possible to get a yellow card by taking a noticeable dive but this is uncommon. Mainly because it has to be exaggerated to the point where it's comical because the referee can't produce a card every time someone goes down a little too easy.

What I'm trying to say is that we can all hate diving together. If you're okay with it that's fine as well but it will always be the worst part of any game for me. All I'm asking is for casual fans to not associate loving soccer with the love of diving.

Be sure to check out our previous post here.