First of all, I find it amusing the article uses a picture of Troy Tulowitzki, who is probably the most frequently legitimately injured player in baseball today. He is hilariously fragile. I assure you he’s never spent a day on the DL he was not legitimately hurt.
Secondly, this isn’t analogous to soccer at all. Of course baseball teams play with the roster rules to their absolute maximum advantage; baseball roster rules are ludicrously complex, with rules upon rules to try to cut down on the gamesmanship, but millions of bucks are at stake so of course they play with it.
But the soccer problem is ON THE FIELD and it’s legitimately getting worse. Baseball teams fooling around with roster movement rules aren’t the same as the game itself being polluted by incessant and absurd diving.
Coincidentally I opened this thread minutes after reading a Guardian article saying that diving has reached epidemic proportions in soccer and is distracting from what should be otherwise remembered as one of the best World Cups ever.
Lots of athletes have pulled the “I’m hurt… psych!” trick. There are a number of accounts of Ty Cobb limping in pain when he reached first base, gingerly taking a short leadoff, and suddenly breaking for second on the next pitch and running like the wind. Again, though, tricking your opponent into dropping their guard is perfectly good sports. Diving is unsportsmanlike - the football equivalent would be faking a facemask violation, for instance, in an effort to draw a personal foul and a 15-yard penalty.
RickJay I hear you.
But let’s turn back a moment. If you are a team faced with a highly physical opponent, who is succeeding in breaking your rhythm then there is great incentive to dive to ensure fouls are called especially if the referee keeps his whistle from blowing.
Part of it is habit and culture. In South American soccer it seems to be an accepted part of the game, in northern Europe, not so much. At least that’s how it used to be.
International tournaments and players playing in leagues with a different culture is what led to faking being defined as a specific offense in international tournaments, but South American players still aim to be the most skilled at both spectacular kicks and spectacular falls.
I think the main problem is that scoring is so hard that it becomes super important to try for penalty shots. If something were done to make scoring easier perhaps the incentive would be less. I also suspect that easing on scoring might cool the hooligans.
It’s weird. The Croatian keeper faked a hammy for some reason, and the ITV commentators - who you would think had seen it a million times - seemed to buy straight into it.
Feel free to doubt it. But your single example is not evidence against my statement that faking used to be more acceptable in some leagues than others.
It also looks to me like that was a genuinely dangerous tackle by Monzon, that would have taken Klinsmann out of play if he hadn’t jumped out of the way.
Referees should add more injury time to the game. A lot of feigned injuries are done to time waste and disrupt momentum. Rugby used to add roughly double the ‘added time’ than soccer does. I’d like to see 4th officials regularly hold up their board with something like 10 minutes on it.
In the USA vs Brazil quarterfinal in the 2011(?) Women’s World Cup, probably the greatest sporting event I’ve ever watched, a remarkable number of Brazilian players suffered extremely painful injuries and then immediately recovered. Oddly, this happened only once their team was leading very late in the game.
Somehow I cant find good numbers, but penalty kicks are still somewhat rare. This year is going to be an outlier, but a normal world cup seems to have 12-18 penalty kicks. If 75% are converted, then they account for 5 to 10% of all goals scored, depending on the year.
It’s an outlier since VAR has shown that the refs have been too stingy in awarding penalties. As I think Vox pointed out rather dryly, one of the reasons players fall so theatrically is to point out fouls.
