This is one of many posters denouncing that terrible act that is too often encountered in football, diving. Here, Ashley Young, a player for Manchester United is shown in a parody of Bruce Willis’s Die Hard in Dive Hard 2. Iain Mcintosh of ESPN Soccernet addressed the prevalence of diving in soccer today with this great piece. After the Real Sociedad versus Manchester United Match, Young’s recent antics brought diving right back to the forefront of discussion. Even after Sir Alex Ferguson and current United manager David Moyes have urged Young to not rely on these dirty tactics, he continues to be in the news for the wrong reasons since his transfer to United from Aston Villa.
In the English Premier League, Young is not the only prominent player to be accused of diving. The great Luis Suarez, an absolute magician who can conjure goals out of nothing for Liverpool, has been under fire for his dives. Compared to Young though, he is an absolutely brilliant actor. In fact, if there was an oscar awarded in football for diving, Suarez would be up there with the likes of Barcelona’s Sergio Busquets and Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo for performances like these.
While these acts happen, people point to better refereeing to remedy the situation, but it is not as simple of a fix as one would assume possible. Unfortunately, in these situations, the referee is put into a tight bind. Since player safety is always the utmost priority on their part, how can referees eliminate instances of obvious cheating? Macintosh suggests that to remove diving from the game we can completely eliminate it by playing the advantage in these situations as the most extreme solution. Interestingly, he also proposes the use of a panel to determine how to dole out retrospective punishment for these major offenses that can easily dictate the outcome of crucial matches from the Champions League to the World Cup stage. This panel would be well suited to asses the complaints made by teams to ensure that these incidents do not happen. By ignoring the situation, we only exacerbate the problem by permitting these acts to continue to occur. Players must realize that there are repercussions for their actions that often go unobserved because they occur in small instances over the course of matches. By having an committee in place overseeing these issues, soccer can once again be played like it was supposed to be as the beautiful game.
What do you all think about the best ways to tackle the complex issue of diving? I would love to hear your thoughts.
https://www.the-newshub.com/football/debate-deception-in-football
All very fair points.
My take on the matter is that diving in football tarnishes the game with a negative brush, but a successfully deceiving the referee is a skill and a tactic – not always worthy of punishment if you are acting to win the game for your team.
Take a look at my recent article, let me know your thoughts
I play soccer and to be honest, I don’t think we need to make a committee to assess the issue of diving any further. I think we are already trying to control soccer a bit too much- new game balls, potential technology to see if the ball crossed the goal line, talks about replays, etc. I have also grown up hearing my coaches tell me to cheat fairly. I think diving is all a part of gamesmanship. Every team is allowed to do it, so it is not an unfair advantage to one over another. I even hear NBA players talk about faking being hit to draw the foul. In my opinion, diving is just being smart. We can’t control soccer too much and put too many regulations on players or that will take away from the game. How can you really know if someone is faking it? How do you know they are not just good actors?
I believe that whenever there are penalties for fouls, there will always be diving. It truly is an unfortunate part of the game, but it is a part of it nevertheless. Even in higher contact sports like football, diving exists to some extent, with players exaggerating hits after the play to draw personal foul penalties. At the moment, I feel like we have proper punishments for diving by oftentimes giving a yellow card for their actions. Although a gray line exists with diving, it exists with every call that a referee has to make throughout the course of the game. Every call will be subject to different opinions whether it’d be fouls, offsides, or diving. I believe that diving should be treated just like other fouls, by awarding the player with a yellow card and giving possession to the other team. However, I don’t think that retroactive punishments should be placed on players who dive. Fines and bans are reserved for the most violent of fouls that cause potential harm to other players. I feel like in game punishments, through a card and lost possession, are more of a deterrent than any fine since they are mostly negligible compared to their large salaries. Although I feel that diving is often a disgraceful way to try and win a game, I don’t think that diving can ever be fully eradicated from the sport.
Diving is one of those things that I think is an unfortunate result of the rules of the game. We see the same thing here in the US in the NBA, where they recently put in a rule that would retroactively fine a player who tried “flopping”, mostly while trying to take offensive fouls. That being said, and I am not sure which book it was in, but we read about how a lot of the game of soccer is about trickery and unfortunately, cheating. While diving is something that I do not think should be allowed, I think it is just as much a part of the game as are fouls and other penalties. I think the systems that are in place help prevent it to a point, but to me it seems like a retroactive punishment system would take away from an important aspect of the game that is trickery.
Diving is an unfortunate blight on the sport. Without a more stringent mechanism for retroactive punishment, it will continue, as the benefits of diving clearly outweigh the risks. Yet, I’m not sure a committee will work. After all, the line between diving and a foul is sometimes very difficult to distinguish. And what do you do about a dive that went noticed by the ref, yet changed the outcome of a game via a penalty? Do we take away 3 points from the victors due to the actions of the diver? Or do we ban him, while preserving the result?