This is more of a question than a rant, but certainly belongs in the Pit.
I’ve been following the World Cup fairly closely and, as an American living abroad, I have to say I am thankful for this wonderful world-class sports diversion.
But one thing I cannot understand is how such groups of highly-trained, physically intimidating world-class athletes can act like spoil-sport drama-queen pussies on the pitch?
How many times have I seen a guy barely get tripped up and he lay writhing on the ground as if he’d just absorbed the full-force of a Lennox Lewis jab? Yesterday in the Turkey-Costa Rica match some player got stretchered out for being grazed by an opponent’s elbow to the ear. Needless to say, he was back on the field in about two minutes.
And, of course, we have the melodramatic stylings of Rivaldo. For those not in the know, a Turkish player kicked the ball at Rivaldo’s legs while Rivaldo was waiting to take a corner. OK, bad form for the Turks. Guy got red carded. However, Rivaldo goes down, clutching his face as if somebody had just dumped a vat of hot oil on it. FIFA finally fined him for this outburst.
Rivaldo’s quotes regarding the incident are priceless:
This is sportsmanship? What the fuck. Just take it like a fuckin’ athlete, get the fuck up off the grass and play soccer. I’m sick of watching players compete for Oscar nominations rather than play the game. Shouldn’t there be a certain honor in taking your “injuries” and playing on? That’s how I was taught to play sports. You didn’t get much approval from your peers if you sat out the game for a nick on your chin, a skinned knee, or a bloody nose. You play through that shit, man.
Can anyone explain why this goes on and why officials tolerate it so?
They’re not supposed to, but it’s often hard to tell in the heat of the moment and from only one angle whether it’s a foul, a dive, or an exaggerated slight foul.
Some nations have traditional reputations for diving, and these days individual players don’t do their reputations much good by carrying on like that. Having said that, the Rivaldo moments are usually few and far between.
True enough, Crusue, I suppose you can’t tell how hard the foul is, but take a look at a game like rugby. Players are constantly falling left and right, taking much, much harder falls and continued physical abuse, yet I rarely see a rugby player clutching at his legs, face, or stomach with a facial expression of a man trying to pass a watermelon out of his ass. Hot damn, I barely remember even seeing stretchers in rugby, yet every other World Cup game somebody seems to be carted of, and every little scrape and fall requires a dosage of morphine (or you’d think so.)
He’s an ass to whine about it, but I don’t really see a problem with what he did. I see the same thing in basketball, when the defender pretends to be bowled over as if visciously hit in order to get a charging foul called. Sometimes they really are hit hard, and a charging foul warranted, but usually they’re faking.
Well, I do see a problem. At the very least, if you’re gonna fake it, at least be somewhat less blatant. Grabbing your face when the ball clearly and obviously hit you in the leg is, to put it bluntly, pretty fucking ridiculous.
I get the feeling this might be a requirement or something. A lot of times, they get to the sidelines and the guy jumps right up out of the stretcher. Maybe that’s the only way they’re allowed to be removed from the field?
In an effort to reduce the possibility of a player feigning injury to disrupt a game, the referee will instruct him to leave the field of play for treatment. He cannot return until the referee explicitly acknowledges his return.
If a player is genuinely injured, then the substitution can usually be made as he is stretchered off and the team is not effectively penalised. If he is slightly injured, it gives him a chance to recover without being substituted, but the team runs the risk of conceding a goal while a man down. If he’s faking, his team can gain no advantage as they’re a man down until he returns.
I hate this attitude (and I know, spooje, that you’re not necessarily espousing it). I think it runs counter to sportsmanship, along with its close cousins: bragging, dancing, and showboating.
However, especially in basketball, I don’t believe it even has the desired effect. It’s the coach’s job to point out fouls and slights the refs have missed. If you get a reputation as a whiner, you’re going to get ignored first, and then actively discriminated against.
As an example, take Vlade Divac. He’s notorious as a flopper, and for good reason. However, now he’s not getting legitimate calls because they think he’s faking it every time he lays out.
From my limited soccer experience, the refs treat whiners and floppers the same way. I believe that the guys who respect the officials will get the calls they deserve, and maybe even some they don’t.
In 2 decades of playing amateur soccer, the only people I saw taking dives were Italians, Central Americans, and South Americans. They were great guys to play with, but it was hilarious every time one of them went flopping to the dirt in order to stop play. It was automatic with them, even if stopping play was the absolute wrong thing to do.
I always found it an annoying delaying tactic if used against my team, so every so often I’d give my opponents a reason to flop. In fact, I really hate delaying actions of any kind, especially idiots who don’t automatically give you your 10 yards on a free kick.
Yes, you can ask the referee to move the guy back, but after one bloke did this three times (because his team was very slow to move into position), I let him have it. He was standing about one meter away-- which was enough room for me to blast the soccer ball right into his groin, and have it fly 70 yards behind me for a goal kick. The guy dropped like a rock, but he didn’t dive. Come to think of it, nobody on that team ever stalled or dived again while playing my team
