Yeah, he isn’t wrong. But we still could make dives less attractive if the referees were quicker to judge them with a yellow card. When Özil faced one in the match “Germany - Australia” I agreed with the ref wholeheartily even though I’m German.
wholeheartedly, of course.
Ah yes, the old “You’ve never played sports” argument.
I’ve played every sport there is to be played, including soccer, and you know how often I’ve seen people REALLY roll around on the ground shrieking like a woman? Maybe twice in my whole life in any sport that wasn’t soccer, and in the few cases that it happened it was when a guy actually broke his goddamned leg or some similar thing.
When people get hurt they might go down, sure, but they don’t roll around shrieking like little girls. You might yell and swear. You might lie still, clutching the injured area. You might walk around shaking it. But the rolling around and shrieking and then being fine five minutes later is fake, pure fake, 100% fake, all theatrics, unless the man actually has a broken bone.
It’s the ones that fall and immediately look for a ref that bother me. If you’re hurting, you’ll spend a half second in your own zone trying to get your brain to deal with the pain, not turning your head left and right to find the guy with the whistle before you even hit the ground. Those guys ought to get carded a lot more often.
And as if on cue, an Ivory Coast player goes down clutching his face after being elbowed in the chest.
Do they think people won’t watch the replay?
Can anything be done to reverse that terrible red card? That was ridiculous! The Ivory Coaster ought to be suspended.
Also, I’m immature, and giggled every time the announcers referred to Kaka. It’s an unfortunate name.
I have to laugh a bit here…I’ve played and reffed a number of basketball games, and I’ve never seen someone fake an injury. But there was one time a guy went to the floor and shouted in pain for a while, and five minutes later was up and apparently fine.
It was me. The pain went away for a while, then came back the next day, and the school doctor was concerned enough to send me out for an X-ray. I had a broken wrist.
You’re right, short of a broken bone or other severe injury I’ve never seen any basketball player act as theatrically.
They don’t care. Kaka was sent off, that was the reaction the player wanted.
Now, here’s a perfect example of where video reviews would be great. Not during the game, but afterward. Cancel out Kaka’s one match ban for the red, give the diver a yellow, so that if he had a previous one he’d get a match, and fine him some decent amount.
This wouldn’t do too much at the moment, but if during a 40 game club season a player fakes 10 (or 75 if Ronaldo) injuries and loses out on $100k, and misses three or four matches, this sort of thing wouldn’t be second nature.
That and more coaching on this sort of thing for the refs. If a guy rolls 6 times, he’s not hurt. If he goes down and doesn’t move, he’s probably hurt.
I loathe seeing players take a dive. Loathe, loathe, loathe it.
All the same, I loathe it less since I started playing football (for fun, but in a team). I guess, if you’re not used to playing football, then you might not realise just how much certain injuries can hurt - the players wear very little protection - and cameras do sometimes make it seem like they’re reacting more than they really are; a focus on a player’s face creased up in agony might seem extreme, when really they were only like that for a few seconds.
When I played football it sometimes ended up looking like we’d been involved in a Fight Club instead, with everyone limping off pitch covered in cuts and bruises. 
Players who’d been injured before would go down wailing even the foul or accidental collision was minor, but that was because being toppled over onto a knee that’s only just recovered from one injury is hugely more painful than toppling onto an uninjured knee. They weren’t faking. But this was us playing just for fun, so we all knew they weren’t faking.
Still, some of the dives in professional football really are so bloody obvious - and I mean really, really bloody obvious - that the player should be carded for it. Rewatching camera shots after the game might not get back that free kick, but they can at least get a carded player off the pitch for the next few games and discourage the practice.
I’d say the same for obvious fouls that only come to light on the cameras afterwards; don’t replay the game, but do punish the player. This is a big debate in football, though - stopping the game for camera replays would be bloody boring and managing red/yellow cards after the event would be extremely difficult too. I still think it would be worthwhile.
But, as I pointed out in another thread, getting Kaka sent off actually hurts his team’s chances in the tournament. There was no way that it was going to help them in this game–it was too late and they were down by two goals–and they need Brazil to beat Portugal to have any chance of advancing, so weakening the Brazilian side is profoundly stupid. So this was a move with nothing but downside, and the obviousness of it combined with video replay just ensures universal derision.
I think video reviews would be a good idea during the game. A video ref could check incidents properly & make a decision. You would hope embarrassment would stop the worst offenders.
No.
Goal differential counts. Playing up for ~10 minutes (right?) is still a good thing for them.
Assuming that Portugal beats North Korea, the only way for Ivory Coast to advance is to beat North Korea and hope that Brazil beats Portugal. Only then will goal differential matter. Taking away an important player from Brazil not only will make it more difficult for Brazil to win, but will also make it less likely for Brazil–in the event they win–to score many goals, which would help considerably with goal differential.
It was more like 5 minutes (88th minute, 3 minutes of extra time); it was exceedingly unlikely for Ivory Coast to score a goal in that time.
Yes. The only way that goal differential will matter is the overwhelmingly likely situation.
“Overwhelmingly likely”? Portugal is ranked third in the world.
On FIFA’s list. Which is notoriously crap. The US was #4 going into the 2006 WC if I remember correctly. Checking wikipedia, it also had Norway 2nd on two separate occasions.
On the ELO rankings Portugal is #12. #10 in Nate Silver’s rankings for ESPN.
Brazil is #1 in all three of those rankings BTW. Kaka or not, Brazil is going to dominate Portugal.
Like they dominated North Korea?
One, that’s still not a tremendous gap.
Two, this tournament has demonstrated that the superior teams are often vulnerable. Let’s look at a few others, using the ELO rankings. Today number 60 New Zealand drew with number 9 Italy. Number 74 Algeria drew with number 5 England. And number 2 Spain was beaten by number 17 Switzerland.
The chances of Ivory Coast scoring a goal in the last minutes even a man up were minuscule. It is “overwhelmingly” more likely that Portugal will compete with Brazil than that Ivory Coast would break through at the end. In the event of a Brazil win, Ivory Coast wants Brazil to score a lot of goals. That chance has also been reduced.
The should have let Brazil bang in a couple more to get their confidence up for the Portugal game.
The chance of scoring a goal in any given small period of time is minuscule, but guess what, every game doesn’t end 0-0.
And the end of a game, up a man, and pushing for a goal is pretty much the most likely times to score of any time ever.
Anyway, care to make a wager that this group comes down to GD?
Of course their chances of scoring (or preventing a score) are going to be higher. My claim is that the chances of Brazil being somewhat weaker for the next game is higher than IC’s chance of scoring.
And, since half my argument is that a weaker Brazil team is less likely to help IC in the goal differential department, no.
At any rate, we should pick this up after tomorrow’s game to see exactly what sort of goal differential we’re looking at.
Besides, if I wagered, it would pretty much guarantee a 14-0 Brazil ass-whuppin’.
Me and gambling don’t get along.