Every few months sports pundits get riled up over some new (or old) perceived slight to their collective manhood, gather up the pitchforks and torches and set off to burn down every village from midlands to the sea in order to wipe this threat to sport off the face of the Earth. A few months back it was the brandishing of imaginary yellow card. Before that it was diving. Then there was cursing. Diving. Imaginary yellow cards. Surrounding the referees. Cursing. Diving. Raising one’s arm “like a sissy” in order to get an offside. And on and on.
This week, it’s back to diving in football. It’s a scourge. It’s cheating. It’s something only foreigners do. It’s something foreigners invented. It needs to be stamped out of football. It needs retroactive bans. It’s worse than a stamp to the face by Robert Huth. It is, in short, the worst thing that ever happened in the history of mankind — this month.
It may or may not be all of those things but there’s one thing I can guarantee you, just like any other form of cheating, it’s never going to go away. But I have a proposal that may help ameliorate some of the heated rhetoric about what constitutes a dive, a foul, and whether or not a player should be labeled a cheat or whether he should be labeled a hero.
But first, let’s define a dive. For that, here’s a handy corporate-type four square dividing up the four main types of events surrounding a dive on a football field:
On the left side of the square we have the noble non-divers and on the right side of the square we have the ignoble dirty cheaters. On the top of the square are fouls and on the bottom are non-fouls. Simplistic enough?
The two items below the equator are almost never in dispute. Uhh… no contact, no dive is easy: Vermaelen foolishly sticks a leg out to stop Ashley Young but misses player and ball, Ashley Young miraculously stays on his feet. Play on! No contact plus dive is also easy because those of us in the television audience with access to instant replay get to see them re-run nauseum.
Here’s a great example of no contact/dive as Gareth Bale looks like he slipped on a banana:
I am firmly in favor of retroactive punishment for this blatant form of cheating. That is, of course, as long as all forms of blatant cheating are retroactively punished: leg breaking tackles, leg breaking intentional stamps on Sagna’s leg, elbows to the face, karate kicks to the chest, etc. All of which are forms of breaking the rules and all of which deserve to be punished after the fact in the way they should have been punished during the match: a yellow for diving, a red for breaking someone’s leg.
Perhaps a yellow card isn’t harsh enough for a dive? Fine, treat it exactly like a denial of an obvious goal scoring opportunity and make it a one-match red card then. Both are a similar form of cheating. Um, while we are at it can we also get the leg breaking stamps and karate kicks to be ramped up to at least a 5 match ban? Please?
Now that we’ve solved that little problem, let’s move on to the big kahuna: contact/dive. This one is a holy war of sorts with folks on one side who believe that any contact at all is a foul and those on the other who believe that any amount of simulation is a dive. It is precariously placed there between the two on our four square despite the fact that the people who believe it is a dive will never believe it is a foul and vice-versa.
I’m not sure when it happened but at some point the idea crept into football’s collective unconscious that any contact on a player “running full speed” is a foul. Thus, when a player does simulate the foul to be harder than it was, people on the “foul” side will argue that “there was contact” and thus the offensive player is well within his rights to go down. Meanwhile people on the “simulation” side will complain that the player “made a meal” of the contact and took a dive.
Here’s an example of Charles N’Zogbia doing just that against Arsenal and winning himself a penalty:
As you can clearly see, Koscielny’s right foot clips N’Zogbia’s left knee. As you can also see, N’Zogbia’s brain takes a second to realize the contact. He starts to plant his right foot but realizes that he could win a free kick and lifts his right foot off the ground and rolls like a judo champ taking a fall in practice.
What if we treated this just as it happened rather than letting one player prevail over the other? What if we gave the free kick for the foul and the yellow card (or red card) for the exaggeration? Is it not possible that it can be both at the same time?
Problem solved, world war 3 avoided, and no one could possibly complain. Except you, who will do so in the comments.
If there was any spirit of fair play in the game, there should be retrospective action by the FA. The fact that the ref saw something but didn’t take action, is unacceptable. Referees have a tough job and only have a few seconds to make a decision, whilst we have countless replays.
Just how the linesman didn’t see Bale’s dive is “amazing”. A 3 match ban might just help.
Perhaps the ban should apply both to the player and the referee (assistant) who misses it. I suppose this would not work because they would run out of referees and then would have to bring in the third division refs like they did for US pro football.
Watching the Nzogbia GIF made me think that he should have got the foul but it would seem right to book him for the simulation too! Then of course you suggest that yourself in the next paragraph.
I agree with everything you say today and would love a ref to have this same common sense.
It could stop players doing this and then ref wondering wether it really was a foul and never giving them because of his previous, players like Suarez for example.
Retroactive punishment is the only answer. Contact dives will always be a point of contention, and not be sufficiently punished, but Bale, Suarez, Manchester United, and the like will cease their aerial theatrics for the blatant ones once they have to start sitting the bench for a couple matches (and it has to be more than one, or bit part players will have no real incentive to not dive).
It also seems to have caught on that the diver kicking out at the divee and going down constitutes contact and therefore also a penalty, that aggravates me almost as much as the diving itself.
It seems to be another example of the kind of thinking that ends up with ‘x player is good so y player can’t be good’, far too rigid and missing the nuances of any rational thought.
If we had retrospective bans for fouls the consequences could be that refs chicken out of lots of red and yellow cards in the knowledge that the cameras are there to administer further punishment. That is my concern.
Implicitly refs no longer have to make decisions in the game that can have an outcome on the result so a further degree of bias could be the result as retrospective gives them a way out of having to send a Man UTD player off. Further increasing the Fergie factor.
But I agree that the outrage is manufactured
Interesting position.
Which has happened in the NFL since the advent of instant replay.
Retroactive punishment seems like the answer, but it still creates an uneven playing field. If a player is assessed retroactively a red card for something he has done to Arsenal he will miss time against other teams which doesn’t solve the original infraction. In some cases it may even do double injustice to Arsenal if he is playing against a team we are battling against for table positioning then they have just received the benefit of not having to face said player. I would like to see games reviewed and the possibility of punishments levied retroactively but would like to see certain game altering things, like PK and FK within certain distances of the box instantly reviewed by a “5th” official. I would be concerned about stoppage of the game, but feel that when a PK/FK set up and player jostling is happening the review should also be happening. The official reviews the issue and radios down. If the PK was legit, so be it, if not, penalty card to diver, penalty card rescinded from the unjustly accused.
As far as retroactive punishments, I think each EPL team should be allowed to elect a retired player to sit on a review panel. These players would join with a number of other game official types. No player would be allowed to review a matter with regards to a team they played for nor regarding a team their (former) team is close to in table standing. The players would need to be a mix positionally and ethnically, not just Strikers or Centerbacks, not just English, and would serve for that season. They would be known publicly, but which player was involved with which decision would not be made public. My reasoning for including former players would be that people who have not been involved in high level athletics do not have the full grasp on the physical reactions/mechanics a player would experience or exhibit during certain episodes. An official understands the rule book, but may not understand that a body moving at full speed when clipped will possibly flail and fall to the turf, or that a guy running can pick up his leg instead of planting it into the giant Italian goalkeepers face. An ex-player will have a bias but we already know many officials do as well.
I know this is no where close to a perfect plan, but the FA, FIFA and UEFA are not paying me so let them work out the kinks. Also I am aware that none of this would ever happen.
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Seriously – I agree will the article AND the comments, BUT…
Too many possible scenarios. I say:
1. Let the refs ref (keeps their game to game importance)
2. Treat referee performance as you would players – the worst go down in leagues and the best come up
3. Retroactive bans on players can only be fairly applied to the Bale – type No Contact/Dive scenario as it is 100% irrefutable
4. Other forms of simulation has the referee’s game decision stand, but fine the player or set a limit on retroactively designated cheating – found guilty (be case this is ALL ON CAMERA you idiot ‘ballers) x number of times and get the ban(s)
Tough topic, but dives like Bale’s MUST be forcibly taken out of the game.
I’m also of the mind that if referee’s would just start slamming players, who surround him after a whistle, with yellows – that sort of behavior will go away.
Any action that exposes the cheating nature of serial divers like Bale, Rooney, Gerrard and Ashley Young should be embraced by all Arsenal fans. So Im all-in on retroactive action.
Looking at the Zogbia .gif, yes there is some contact but what is also obvious is that the contact is minimal and Zogbia dives into the ground like he’s just been shot. In situations like that I don’t think there is a foul, Kosielny should not be given a yellow and Zogbia should be given a retroactive ban for simulation.
It’s difficult to see this problem on general view because we, Arsenal, tend to be at the receiving end. I agree with all your suggestion Tim, especially the punishment. Although it’s still hard to prove on the side of Contacts/Dive, but there’s a certain degree that we can draw a line on what is an exaggerate fall and what is not. All in all, I really like to see the view of the Man Utd and Liverpool fans on this problem, because they are the high profile serial perpetrators.
I’m going off topic but I’m just curious. When I read Arsenal analysis on Cazorla, I’m stumbled on the case of his appreciation of space which can’t be captured in stats. Is it though? Are there no stats to describe on a player who receive the ball in dangerous positions away from opponents? Or even just a players in any given position receive the ball away from opponents?
Unfortunately, like most every thing else in life, nothing is certain except for change. Trying to discern between minimal and grievous contact is almost impossible at times, especially without the aid of instant replay and slo mo.
Whether intentional or not, if you make illegal contact with an opponent and he goes to ground, regardless of how soft, it’s technically still a foul and the letter of the law should be applied. It may be unfortunate for Koz as shown by the above clip, but he did make contact and the right call was made.
If we tried to apply the soft/incidental contact rule it would really be even more of a quagmire for Refs. Would we then have to discern between invited contact (where a player leaves his leg in and gets hit although he could easily have avoided it.), intentional contact , hard contact, soft contact, etc. We would also then have to decide what a player’s intention was. Too messy for me.
Just apply the rules by the book, allow for retrospective punishment and game bans, and manager’s would certainly crack down on the players .
Bale on the other hand was a sheer disgrace and a 3 game retrospective ban would be more than fitting.
First, not all contact is a foul.
Second, the laws of the game already have the referee judge both intent and level of force. The term “reckless” is applied to yellow card fouls and “serious” fouls are given red cards.
Note Tim, I said “illegal contact”, not contact as a basis of a foul. Yes, there are many cases of legal contact which is covered by the rules.
Secondly, reckless versus serious is merely a subjective case of analyzing the intent of a “foul” .
Case in point: If I am running down the field to tackle someone and my teammate bumps me into the opponent and puts him on the floor, it’s still a foul. If it happens in the penalty area, it’s still going to be called a penalty. Similarly, if I trip over my laces when attempting a tackle and hack down the opponent, it’s still a foul, intent or not. Whether it’s yellow or red could be subject to interpretation of intent, but, it’s still a foul.
I hate diving but i completely understand sometimes when a player goes down with minimal contact or no contact if they are trying to minimize possible damage from a bad tackle or bad contact. But why do players NEVER, EVER seem to get up and say ‘sorry, that wasn’t supposed to look like I just got stabbed in the thigh with a flaming poker – I was just trying to avoid getting hurt, I’m honestly not looking for a free’.?
Meh. I wish more was made of shirt-pulling, just so that John Terry could experience further shame. Dirty English cheat.
OK, I just went and read the FIFA laws of the game.
The problem is that the laws are deliberately quite broadly defined, and rely on the role of the referee. There are no (and perhaps can be no) objective standards for what counts as a foul and what does not, so you have to leave it to the ref’s judgement.
For example, whether or not there is contact is irrelevant, a ref can give a foul for intent to kick or trip an opponent. So if a defender hangs out a leg and the attacker dives over it, it can still be a legitimate foul.
This causes problem for the introduction of video refs. I think it only works on clear-cut calls where there are objective standards: for example, whether or not the ball has crossed the line, or for offside calls. (Personally I think there is much better technology around for this than video, and if you’re going to do it you should do it properly with location chips in the ball and on players).
Retroactive bans are also a double-edged sword as others have pointed out: imagine Suarez already took a point off us with a dive, and Liverpool now play Chelsea who are a point ahead of us. We want him to be playing that game, not sitting in the stands.
In the end, unless we radically change the rules of the game, it all boils down to referees and their decision-making. I support video review of incidents they didn’t see. I would support making video available to them real-time to help them make calls where there is a natural break in play. I would support them awarding fouls AND cards for simulation for the same incident if players go down too easily. But if they think they saw an incident correctly and make a decision there and then, you shouldn’t be able to revisit that decision and start throwing around bans.
The reason players dive is pretty simple. The risk-benefit ration is hugely in favor of diving. The benefit is a penalty (80% chance of a goal) or a free kick in a dangerous area. Nobody (except Tim) seems to have picked up on this but the free kick from which Nolan almost scored from Carroll’s knockdown was a result of a Mark Noble dive. And Gervinho got cautioned on that “foul,” just to add insult to injury. The risk is a yellow card which is rarely given. Honestly, it seems as if every game has at least one incident of diving and there are a handful of well publicized incidents every month but one rarely sees a card brandished. My guess would be one in twenty incidents gets carded. So it’s simple, if you want to change the behavior, you have to increase the risk since you can’t manipulate the reward aspect of it.
Anything which increases the chance of punishment whether it’s more referees, immediate video review or post-match video review will make players less likely to dive. And personally, I think the punishment should be red card. Diving is the offensive equivalent of denying a goal scoring opportunity for defenders. If DOGO wasn’t a special category of foul and was a just a yellow card, there would be nothing to prevent John Terry from rugby tackling anyone who got behind him. Diving is trying to win a goal scoring opportunity by a foul (simulation considered a foul). So it’s pretty simple, really. Increase the chance of getting caught by whatever means necessary and increase the penalty and you would significantly decrease the number of players even trying to dive.
I know this thread is already ancient history, but just to stress: simulation is not a foul. It’s not even mentioned in the laws of the game.
What you have instead in the laws is a yellow card for unsportsmanlike behaviour (i.e. cheating) – but this could potentially be almost anything, and it is not under the list of foul offences and does not result in a direct or indirect free kick. In the accompanying directives for referees it does say that they must produce this yellow card for cases of simulation or feigning injury.
So maybe the first step would be to make simulation a foul offence in the laws of the game. But the key problem in my view is not how to punish diving, it’s how to spot it in the first place. And this is where referees need more tools to help them, like video.
I notice you suggest that Gareth Bale slipped on a banana peel. I had a similar reaction: He thought the ball was a fruit and tried to peel it with his feet.
Only foreigners? Really? What of Young? Bale(British)?