Soccer players - the biggest babies on the planet?

The Game Room
61

Capt. Sir, I realise that my reply sounded like I was totally against you. Not the case, just making the point that it is possible for people to be in real agony and then up and running in a couple of minutes.

but…big but, and in line with your points…the times such a thing happened to me was rare indeed, most of the time when you are hurt, the thing that gets you on your feet again is the cessation off the pain. It certainly isn’t re-start of play or the booking of your opponent.

Personally, I’d be all in favour of very harsh punishment for everyone who obviously feigns injury (i.e. the Ivory Coast player yesterday.) Simply because what they do poisons the well for everyone and makes the ref’s job far harder.

62

The Scottish Premier League has been making moves in this direction in recent years. It seems a no-brainer to me.

63

Moderator’s note:

This isn’t a warning, infraction or ruling of any kind, more of an ethics note;

Speculating on the credentials of other posters without any background statement from them can’t lead to anything good and frequently leads to offense being taken - in many cases righteously. It also makes it seem, to other posters, that you are pulling others down to establish yourself. I’ve had PMs about this behaviour in the Game Room lately and I agree that it isn’t conducive to a good atmosphere.

While I’m singling you out here a bit, ShibbOleth, that is only because you were blunter than the other case I considered today. You’re not being warned or anything and there isn’t a Rule against this - this is just a suggestion.

Cheers,
Gukumatz
Game Room Moderator

64

Guess what happens next.

65

I was thinking along the lines of keeping the status quo so as to maintain game flow. To that, I’d tack on full post-game video review with the ability to levy fines, which would escalate with both severity and repetitiveness of the behavior. A portion of the fines can be redistributed as bonuses for outstanding play. The results can be announced a week later, with the possibility of appeal – why not? If players want to hire lawyers to argue their case, that’s fine with me as well.

66

This.:eek:
Not for the squeamish.

67

Obviously I was talking about the kind that doesn’t injure you. Or outright kill you, in the case of a fastball to the temple.

68

Whoa, wait a minute. Quite a lot of matches in football decide the question whose pockets are going to be filled with millions, if not tens of millions of euros.

The more post-game review we allow, the more will the losing side try to correct the result via lawyer and the next opponent will have plenty of reason to weaken the other team by using its influence in the authorized organization to suspend players for fouls, dives or any other culpable act, they may find or claim to have found somewhere on a video.

The severity of a foul and its assumed intent, for example, determine the length of a suspension. Severity is difficult to judge; we had such a case in this year’s Champions League.

Franck Ribéry fouled Lisandro López in the first game of the semifinals and faced a red card; the referee’s statement prompted the UEFA to rate the situation not as a simple foul or a “serious foul play” but as a “violent conduct” (which adds intent). This leads invariably to a suspension of three games instead of one or two – which meant that Bayern Munich would definitely lose an irreplacable piece of their offence against Mailand in the final.

And though even the unhurt Lopez spoke for Ribéry, the verdict wasn’t changed. Now, the foul was of a kind that I think should be judged harshly to warn copycats and give the player reason to rethink his conduct, so the judgment itself is hard but not ridiculous. And though I think “serious foul play” would have been more appropriate, this would still have resulted in a two-game suspension, so they would have played the remainder of the tournament without Ribéry anyway.

Two problems however became apparent in the following arguments: a) other fouls that had indeed led to severe injuries hadn’t been punished that hard afterwards and b) the committees that decided the sentence were in the majority ruled by South European officials, while Middle and North Europe are severly underrepresented.

I have no idea if this played any role in the sentence – and I’ve already said that I could see its point – but I very much doubt that we could escape serious bias if committees were allowed even more influence on the outcome of tournaments than they already have (quite a lot before the matches even begin: the selection of the referees is just one example).

More reviews by clannish organizations don’t necessarily lead to justice. If we want to give them more powers, we need to establish balanced representation first.

69

There’s already disciplinary hearings in football, but their scope is limited. Why hasn’t the current situation descended into chaos, with each club trying to get opposition player suspended as long as possible?

70

naw— wouldn’t need to be a red card, but it would be an intentional handball and a yellow probably.

71

Because the opportunities for an intervention are still pretty limited and not particularly attractive for clubs or national representatives and after-game decisions that lead to new sentences are so rare that each one is observed closely. Also, where did I talk about chaos? Are court hearings and inner-organizational bias synonyms?

72

Clubs turning an intra-league disciplinary matter into a legal circus to stifle opposition teams and gain a competitive advantage sounds like a good description of chaos to me!

73

How do we know that video replay decisions won’t make referee’s improve their game and make them even keener to get things right first time? Can anyone say that refereeing professional standards have increased at the same rate as the footballer’s?

74

Ah, I was talking more about international competitions where other interests play a role too and the arcane bureaucracy of the large continental organizations comes into play. The need to work together within a league are a pretty good restraint against a circus.

Interesting question. My first reaction was a decisive “No, of course not!”, but … how much of this is selective perception? I usually don’t remember the 20 correct offside-decisions in a game, but recall in detail the obvious blunder that changed its outcome.

Do you know of any study that compares the performances of the referees in the presence with the past objectively?

75

In other words, are the referees worse than they were due to the increasing speed of the game and the larger mobility of all players or do the media, their focus on errors and the countless repetitions in slowmo and zoom make it appear that way?

76

Before the 2006 World Cup Dutch television showed all the Dutch games from the '74 WC. It was interesting to see how badly some of the linesmen fell for the Dutch offside trap (a relatively unknown tactic at the time). Basically, as soon as a deep pass to the strikers was made, the Dutch defenders would all run forward at the same time and the linesmen would invariably call offsides, even though about 50% of the time there was no player offside at the time the pass was made. Nowadays linesmen don’t fall for a badly executed trap.

77

Long time amateur soccer player here (going on 40 years now, yikes).

Shin strikes stopped hurting since I was 12 or so. I’ve been drilled and spike viciously many times, and while the pain still occurs in the background it never overrides my ability to keep going in the flow or get up and get running. Any player falling down clutching their shin after a tackle is faking without doubt.

What does hurt, and may be difficult to distinguish by a referee or fan, is getting chopped in the ankle or tuning your ankle hard. This pain will shut my voluntary body down–even if no real injury, my brain overrides and says “whoa, hold on a few secs, gotta check this out” before it will let me run it off. Quite often, 2 minutes later it will be like nothing ever happened.

The key visual clue for you fans is how the player falls:
Down hard on chest or face, hip or shoulder hit ground first == real
Arms flail and go down on side or back, sliding fall with legs or knees first == theater

78

That simply is not true.

79

Indeed. All you have to think about is stubbing your toe. For a few minutes all you can do is hop and think about the pain. A few minutes later you can be walking around fine. Pain can take you out of the world for a small time and once it dissipates you’re good to go again.