FA Go To FIFA To Deal With Divers
Greg Louganis and cohorts can rest easy although players such as Didier Drogba and Joe Cole may face a slight problem if FIFA go ahead with the FA’s proposal to allow retrospective punishments for players found guilty of diving to earn free kicks and penalties.
With the problem currently under the media spotlight again following Didier Drogba’s admittance that he did dive during games (shock horror!) the FA are trying to talk players and managers into a regime of self policing instead of using legislation to end the scourge of the modern game but it has to be said that self policing hasn’t worked in the past and has only allowed the situation to get worse.
Current managers Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes both believe the problem has gotten worse since they played at the highest level and these days it can’t only be blamed on foreign players with such England regulars as Michael Owen and Joe Cole being renowned for going down easily under challenges. If the clubs and managers aren’t willing to stop the practice (who’s to say they don’t actively encourage it?) then it is the responsibility of the FA and FIFA to step in and implement laws worldwide to end the ridiculous spectacle of grown men playacting. I thought football was a man’s game?
About the author Alan Hylands
Alan is both a former SOTG editor and former World Soccer editor at the New York Times Company. Football-wise, he wishes he was a younger lovechild of Glenn Hoddle and Diego Maradona (not the short, fat, cokehead, religious nut bit obviously...)
Follow me on Twitter: sotgfootball
WWow, you managed to mention Drogba and Cole twice, with a massing mention of Owen. No C. Ronaldo, no Rooney, no Pires………I take it you don’t support Chelsea.
Perhaps a bit more evenhanded reporting wouldn’t go amiss.
Paranoid? Just because other players do it doesn’t make it right for your own to partake of the “simulation” phenomenon.
Any arguments about the two players I’ve mentioned being renowned divers? Didn’t think so hence their inclusion.
Neither does it make them unique. My favourite cheats are as follow:
Geoff Hurst and Roger Hunt: 1966 World Cup Final. CHEATS
Every supporter of England in the 1966 Cup Final. Apologists for cheats.
Michael Owen for England v Argentina, diving for a penalty. CHEAT
(Saint) Gary Lineker openly admits to diving twice against Cameroon for penalties in the World Cup. CHEAT.
Francis Lee. A career entirely composed of cheating for England and Man City.
I’m trying to find the announcement that they are giving up their International caps and win bonuses, but I can’t find one. CHEATS.
That’s the trouble with English players, especially when they’ve played for England, teaching the world how to cheat and profit from it. A nation of cheats, clearly.
But no, so we’re now informed. It only began this season in West London. Funny that.
This article has won my “hypocrite of the day” award. Congratulations.
But are they the only examples you could come up with? Can I ask which team you support?
Not paranoid so much as pissed off by the ‘Chelsea players this’ and ‘Chelsea players that’ mentality which is affecting journos and bloggers alike.
I think Cole has cleaned up his act this season, which rather makes a lie of those claims that Mourinho encourages his players to dive. In my opinion Drogba goes down very easily sometimes, when at other times it appears that he could hold off the whole opposing team and still remain on his feet.
To single him out in a press witch-hunt is disgusting, though. If articles such as yours were more balanced, I wouldn’t even have replied.
Balanced? They are two of the highest profile known divers in the Premiership, accept it. I’m not saying they are the only ones but with Drogba admitting that he takes a dive and finds handling the ball part of the game I would have thought even Chelsea fans would find it difficult to defend him.
I support Spurs by the way, nothing to hide there and I’m glad to say we don’t really have any players at the minute who are more partial to lying on the ground than staying on their own two feet. I know Ginola was accused of it many times but I usually found him to take more than his fair share of over the top challenges as well and stay on his feet.
Squiddy, I won’t hear a word against Gary Lineker, the man is a saint and those shirts he wears on Match of the Day with the top few buttons undone are in no way inappropriate viewing for blokes on a Saturday night (note to Lineker: it’s Match of the Day, not the bloody Tom Jones show, button your f***ing shirt up). Also, I’m not English so how does that make me a hypocrite? If I was a professional player who dived on the pitch and then wrote this post I would be a bit of a hypocrite, I advise a trip to http://www.dictionary.com.
If it makes you all feel better I’ll start a list of other team’s players who in my opinion go to ground too easily, feel free to add your own:
Michael Owen
Emile Heskey
“Lily” Savage
Robert Pires
Cristiano Ronaldo
Luis Garcia
Kevin Davies
Spurs eh? ‘Nuff said.
Yes its easy to dislike Chelsea at the moment. There’s obviously the jealousy factor of Russian sugar-daddy bringing overnight success; there’s the graceless winning from the “chosen one”, and there’s all this throwing themselves around by these bloody foreigners!
Whilst its easy to single out Chelsea on the third point (big team, big coverage and Drogba’s recent slips of the tongue plus perhaps the most disgaceful single dive I’ve ever seen on a British pitch outside of Robbie Earnshaw at Windsor Park), it has to be (and generally is) accepted that its not only Chelsea players doing this.
Van Niistelrooy was rightly vilified for his air-born antics, Diouf’s falling over habit is almost as nasty as his spitting, the warnings of diving doom were sounded for Klinsman’s arrival over a decade ago (thankfully he wasn’t as bad in the Premiership as previous high-profile sprawls would suggest).
What has to be understood is that diving should not be “just part of the game”. Diving/simulation should be treated as seriously as foul-play, even if it has to be done retrospectively, as it is potentially just as key to the outcome of a game (wrongly awarded penalties, sendings-off etc). If you can be “done” for violent conduct after the event and you can have cards rescinded later on, why can’t you be “done” for simulation?
This is not a Chelsea witch-hunt, this is a cheats witch-hunt which must be carried out for the good of the game. INTEGRITY
I resent the use of the word Klinsmann in the context of a diving cheats discussion, the man was horribly vilified on the continent for becoming the victim of sadistic defenders unhappy at his superior talent.
The defence rests;-)
Saw on Satuday afternoon’s BBC Football Focus the idea from the FA of forcing known divers to wear yellow armbands! Don’t know for sure how serious this idea is as it was a feature low on details an high on humour (or smug, this’d never happen in my day-ness) from “Lawro” and co. Well, I guess its something.
As for my statements about Klinsmann, they were carefully worded so as not to cause offence to some overly sensitive Lilywhites (:P), but I stand by them, and I’m sure Costacurta has yet to forgive the cheating so-and-so for his 1994 European Cup semi-final antics!
Wasn’t April 1st by any chance on Saturday morning was it?
Yeah, Saturday morning was indeed April Fools, Saturday at 4:48pm was something else entirely!