Yeah, the only time I’ve ever been injured playing a sport was playing goalkeeper in soccer. I grabbed the ball in the goalie box, and an idiot on the other team came and kicked it out of my hands, dislocating the phalange on the end of my thumb. It was crossing the next one like a T. I surely had some choice words for Danny, but rolling around like a decapitated chicken wasn’t on my list of things to do.
All of that said, I think part of the performative aspect of being injured in professional soccer is a combination of the ref having a lot of things (and players) to keep his eyes on, and it’s relatively easy to do really painful things to each other without it being obvious when two people are fighting for control of the ball. So, you end up with a situation where demonstrating wildly is probably your best bet when you feel you’ve been fouled. In turn, a certain number of people will eventually adopt the same behavior when they think it’s to their advantage.
To compare it to hockey one last time: in hockey you can still get called for embellishment even if the other guy actually did perform an illegal move on you. Yeah, they cross checked you, but you acted like they killed your grandma. Two minutes for you too, genius. It’d be nice to see a similar mechanism in soccer, but since it’s not really a penalty box style system, I can’t even imagine how you’d enforce such a thing.
Apropos of nothing, it’ll be a lot easier to root for Argentina when they’re not playing a small island country that’s hitting above it’s national weight.
Let’s wait and see how this game and the whole Cup ends. Maybe we’ll see a lucky Frodo with a new tattoo after all this ends. And all Argentinians will snicker about how they almost fucked up in the round of 32 against Cape Verde, before Messi saved them.
Last couple of attacks for Argentina have just been long balls into the box. Kinda reminding me of England towards the end of their game; we’ll see if anyone steps up like Kane did.
I don’t think they’ll keep the draw in regular time, and not in extra time, but if it comes to penalties, all bets are off. Argentina will be demoralized by then. But I’m wayyyyy projecting, it’s still a long way to go.
Not that long! Martinez would be fine in PKs I imagine, but Vozinha would be on some magical shit at that point. And the Argentine takers I could see being freaked out.