All the people confused or calling out, making fun of the diving in the sport, I get it, I hate it just as much, if not more. But you have to understand, the high stakes at play, the emotions, the pressure, and above all else the obsessive desire to win. Soccer (fuck you, I call it soccer) is a tiny allegorical sliver of life and the human spirit with all of its imperfections.
I wish I could articulate it a little better, that's just how I see it.
I think most of us understand why they do it. Problem is they keep doing it because the ref does nothing about it.
If hockey players were allowed to fake getting tripped or cross checked and the refs never call an unsportsmanlike penalty (combined with a $$$ fine), they'd keep faking it. But in every other sport, diving fouls are called if players fake it. So there's no point in diving. That doesn't mean it never happens, but rare. I could probably watch 10 hockey games in a row of people getting plastered by slashes, trips and getting rammed into the boards. The number of players faking crumbling in pain hoping to draw a penalty is rare even though the opportunity to draw one is every 10 seconds as it's a contact sport. Powerplay goals are roughly a 20% success rate. So you'd think trying to draw penalties would happen every minute with people faking it. But they cant because the ref will give that player a penalty for embellishment (diving).
I was right (my above post), refs can give divers a yellow card. I've seen it once in my life. The rule is there, but they dont do it.
en.wikipedia.org
The
game's rules state that "attempts to deceive the referee by feigning injury or pretending to have been fouled (simulation)" must be sanctioned as
unsporting behaviour which is
misconduct punishable by a yellow card.
[3] The rule changes are in response to an increasing trend of diving and simulation.
Diving as deceptive behaviour[edit]
In 2011, researchers studying signalling in animals examined diving in the context of
communication theory,
[16] which suggests that deceptive behaviour should occur when the potential payoffs outweigh the potential costs (or punishments). Their aim was to discern when and where diving is likely to occur, with the aim of identifying ways to stop it.
The researchers watched hundreds of hours of matches across six European professional leagues and found that diving is more likely to occur a) near the offensive goal and b) when the match is tied. None of the 169 dives seen in the study were punished.
It was also found that diving was more common in leagues where it was rewarded most – meaning that the more often players were likely to get free kicks or penalties out of a dive, the more often they dived. This suggests that the benefits of diving are far outweighing the costs, and the only way to reduce diving in football is by increasing the ability of referees to detect dives and by increasing the punishment associated with them.
Dr. Robbie Wilson, a member of the group that conducted the study, said: "Some progressive professional leagues, such as the Australian
A-League and the American MLS have already started handing down punishments for players found guilty of diving. This is the best way to decrease the incentive for diving".
[17]
Some have referred to simulation as a menace to footballers with real, sometimes life-threatening, injuries or conditions. On 24 May 2012, English
FA referee
Howard Webb spoke to a FIFA medical conference in
Budapest about the importance of curbing simulation in football, as players feigning injury could put players with serious medical issues in jeopardy. Earlier that year, he had to deal with the collapse of
Fabrice Muamba, who suffered
cardiac arrest during an
FA Cup match.
[18]