Mr Messi, yes you, of Barcelona. Barcelona football club. Not ballet, not diving. We all saw you have a peep before you started rolling over the mud at Stamford Bridge. We all knew you weren’t hurt. We all saw how you came trotting back on three minutes later, after you’d achieved your purpose of getting the other fellow sent off.
Only one thing to say to you. Hope you break your leg in one of the potholes in the second half. Like Smithie’s, maybe yours too will be pointing to Hong Kong.
That is the exact reason I can’t tell friends of mine that I enjoy watching soccer (football). They start making fun of me for watching “A bunch of expletive field fairies falling down all the time just to draw a penelty”. Can’t really argue they’re mostly correct.
The problem seems to be rampant in Latin America soccer (in the one game I’ll watch a every couple of weeks on the latin soccer channels)
I didn’t really want to start a whole thread on this, but while there’s the oppurtunity…
ARRRSSENALLL!
cough. Anyway, I agree, diving is pretty rampant ( to show i’m not biased, Robert Pires is probably one of the worst offenders in this regard ). It seems to be just a standard in football now - another player takes the ball off you and brushes past, you go down.
Well, the bastard didn’t break a leg, but he cocked up after getting to the byeline, when he should have scored or at least found a team-mate, and then his left-footed effort came bouncing back off the bar. Funny thing is, I thought the ref had a good game overall, but to me Del Horno’s challenge was late but there was no malice and no much contact besides a bump. No studs. Then the ref has 2 minutes to think while they’re getting treatment (both faking it of course - del Horno to try to deflect attention from his clumsy tackle) and sends the fellah off. If Messi had just got back up (as, say, Roy Keane would have done - yes, he’s an animal at times, but an honest animal), then the ref would never have sent the bloke off. Rijkaard should look at himself as well.
I watched that game on ESPN2 earlier, and that was a pretty bad dive. You’re right though the ref up to that point called a solid game.