"Henry, Ronaldo + Zokora all guilty - but who will act?"
By Sawyer, 26th October 2006
In a statement issued by FIFA by the World Cup referees and medical officials it was established that a staggering 58% of all those players who were seen to be rolling around in agony were not actually injured. This figure that was arrived at had been confirmed by chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak at the World Cup after medical staff had to report on the injuries during each match.
The most likely reason given was tactics.
Sepp Blatter had initially called for referees to be tough on this sort of thing, but it appears the players of nowadays have mastered the art, if you can call it that, of feigning injury.
With FIFA actually giving the reason as ‘tactics', it almost seems as though they are hiding behind a word that in this case may as well be ‘cheating'. Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo was probably the most high profile player to be constantly caught on camera throwing himself to the floor, but he was by no means the only culprit. However, the fracas with England and Wayne Rooney primarily made him public enemy No.1, which was followed by some Olympic standard diving in the Semi-Final with France. One attempt to win a penalty was so good he even had to dive to try and get close to touching the opponent before making his heartfelt appeal.
Strangely, when the pressure was off in the play-off match with Germany he had a good game by staying on his feet, which is what he has primarily done for Man United this season. Less characteristically, which makes it more worrying, was the sight of Thierry Henry going down as though being hit by a missile. The Arsenal man is usually quite renowned among most professionals and fans as being one of the fairest players around, and it was sad to see him so blatantly looking to con the referee.
Henry was certainly not a persistent offender throughout the tournament, but once is once too many and maybe this could have been behind the Spanish referee disallowing his goal against CSKA Moscow. Let's hope not, but his theatrics helped France win a free kick from which they levelled against the Spanish and then went on to knock them out. At this point it is only fair to reiterate that these two players are by no means the only culprits and Arjen Robben among many others could easily have been used instead of Ronaldo, and Henry is used solely because it was such a shock to see him do such a thing, as it was with Rivaldo four years earlier.
Didier Zokora won an embarrassing penalty for Tottenham against Portsmouth the other week, and some TV pundits suggested that he may have fallen in anticipation of Pedro Mendez's tackle. Whether this is the case or not, only Zokora will actually know, but he wasn't exactly going to inform the referee of what actually happened so he effectively cheated.
A few years ago David Seaman was deemed to have fouled Liverpool's Robbie Fowler in the area and we had the strange situation of both Seaman and Fowler trying to dissuade the referee from giving a penalty as Fowler had quite clearly not been fouled. Zokora should have done the same; but yet again he is certainly not on his own as a culprit and is used here as an example because the situation was quite recent.
Unfortunately, with so little contact allowed in today's game it is probably true to say that players take advantage of this and go down too easily for free-kicks and penalties, or of course near the end of a match time can be wasted by constantly rolling around and calling for the magic sponge.
The question is what can be done about it?
A referee's job is difficult enough and as more and more players ‘cry wolf' it could even be the players themselves that ultimately suffer.
The incidents involving Chelsea's Petr Cech and Carlo Cudicini were obviously not deemed as initially that serious by referee Mike Riley who may have thought he was being conned by the players, but of course in these instances he certainly wasn't.
For arguments sake, what if a player with Ronaldo or Robben's reputation went down late in a match with a serious injury? Would the referee think immediately about stopping the game? Probably not!
Therefore, harsh penalties for those that do offend may ultimately help the players and make a referee's life a lot easier in to the bargain. After all it is us, the fans, who pay to watch football and if we wanted to see people falling over all the time we may as well go to the circus and laugh at the clowns. The only thing is the clowns won't be getting 30k plus a week. We already have a fourth official at the side of the pitch that actually does relatively nothing. How about having an impartial doctor who can come on with the physio to access any injury?
If in his opinion the player is faking it then he can inform the fourth official who can issue a three game ban for the player in the referee's report. If the situation occurred in the final fifteen minutes of the match then the fourth official, on the doctor's advice, could hold the player from returning to the action for five minutes.
For players that dive, punch, spit, etc; then it would make sense to use video evidence and get rid of this stupid rule that exonerates the player if the referee has been deemed to see the incident at the time.
If the referee does see the offence, including diving, then sending off the culprit should be the course of action.
Should Luis Figo have played against England in that World Cup Quarter-Final? Of course not!
Anyone found guilty of diving and other cheating offences; give them a seven to ten game ban depending on the seriousness of the situation taking into account their past record.
These punishments may sound a little excessive, but the hope is that they would never have to be invoked as players would be more concerned with playing football than conning the poor old ref.
The average number of genuine injuries in a 2006 World Cup match has dropped to 2.3 per match from 2.7 in 2002. Strange how the number of bookings and fouls went up then?
FIFA speaks a lot about cleaning up the game, but when will they realise that a simple yellow card is water off a ducks back to most players these days. Stronger measures are needed, but will anyone be brave enough to administer them?
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Really interesting article. I think that one of the things that drew me to Liverpool as a club was their sense of fair play. Nothing frustrates me more then cheating in this fashion, whether its diving, feigning injury or intentional hand-balls. How often do you see strikers try using "the hand of God" and have their offence laughed off by the referee and go unpunished? I remember sometime last year I made a poll about whether a sin bin was a worthwhile idea in football, as it had such good success in cleaning up rugby league as a sport, it could do the same to football. Understandable, not everyone would be able to accept a sin bin as part of the game, but I think that all of the changes that Sawyer offers are things that everyone can agree would be in the best interest of the game, for both players and spectators.
I was interested to hear if people thought that this is a problem that needs addressing, and if so, are these adequate strategies to counter-act this negative culture present in the current game?
