For those who call football a girls sport...

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The girliness in soccer is nothing to do with the injuries that people get (a broken leg does not make you a man). The girliness comes from all the play acting and fake injuries that the players in the top leagues keep suffering from (which then unfortunately encourages the junior players to do the same).

 

Cheating happens in all sports. I see players in rugby try to disguise offside tackles. I've seen cricket players try to claim catches they never made. I see football players to trick the ref into giving them a foul, when they weren't fouled.

Professional sports have cheating.

 

It's not the cheating part of it that's girly. It's the girly cry baby play acting.

"Boo hoo, that horrible man bumped into me and I fell over. Waaa, waaaa, Mr Referee! Save me! Save me! I'm dying, save me! [referee makes a decision or ignores player, and player is instantly cured, just like a little baby who falls over and cries and then stops when he sees a butterfly go past]

A cricketer doesn't cry and moan when a fast bowler hits him hard on the body somewhere. A rugby player doesn't cry and pretend to be mortally wounded after someone tackles him. I'm sorry, but big league soccer players come across as being petulant little brats. It's that that makes it a girly sport. The sport itself is great, but many of the players spoil it by being silly and immature. And the biggest problem is that kids copy their heroes' behaviour in their own games.

 

That's because those things in cricket and rugby are perfectly legal. Tackles in football are usually very borderline legal, so to try and get an advantage to his team, a player sometimes tries to sway the referees decision. It's not petulance,it's intelligence. I don't like it and never have done. But it's a smart thing to do if you know you've lost the ball.
Fortunately, the English leagues are not 'so' much like this as the Spanish and especially Italian leagues are. I can barely watch a Serie A match because of all the whistles going off all the time. But that's just the Italians being very good play actors. But they get away with it. Don't blame the players, they're just doing their best to get advantages for their tean. Blame the ref's for being stupid enough to fall for it.

I persoanlyl think that yellow cards whenever the ref thinks a player has dived, will persuade players to keep on their feet much more.

 

No, it's petulance. People take dives in all types of sports when they think they've been fouled. Someone bumps into you when you're trying to make a shot in basketball, you fall down, hoping to get a foul called. When a receiver in American football gets bumped into and cannot make the catch, he falls over hoping to get a flag thrown. I can come up with other examples if you'd like. However, at no time does the player roll around on the ground in mock-agony. He gets back up immediately, unless on the off chance that he really is hurt, which 99% of the time, he isn't.

That's because in any sport I'm aware of, an injury is not the criteria for whether something is against the rules or not. If you do something against the rules, it results in a penalty/foul regardless of whether or not you injure the opposing player. How is it "intelligent" to pretend you're injured if that's not the basis of why a penalty/foul is called? If a player is injured by someone making a legal play, do they call a penalty/foul for that in soccer? They don't in any other sport I'm aware of. That's another reason why I don't think taking a dive should be called cheating. In fact, if anything, the person committing the penalty is cheating, i.e., he is performing an act against the rules of the competition, which seems to be the very definition of cheating.

 

Exactly, diving happens in all sports, it's not just in footy. It's rare that a player feigns injury in football, but when he does, he's trying to make a foul look worse than it actually was. He does this to try and get the other player yellow carded or even sent off. Simple as that. Going down under a foul, then getting right up, is honest and a good thing to do. But honesty does not win football matches. It's all about winning. If a player goes down under a tackle screaming and clutching his leg, the ref is going to be more inclined to think "bloody hell, that was a bad one, I'll book him for that". Good refs don't get swayed by that though.

It is cheating by the way. Someone going down when they weren't fouled. Or play acting to try and get another player sent off is against the rules of football. It's conniving and decietful, but a great advantage for your team if it works. That's why people do it.

 

Barmy,

What I'm saying though is that the only sport where I have seen players pretending they were injured by an illegal move is soccer. It goes beyond taking a dive. You're right in saying that people take dives in all sports, I think the problem people have with soccer is that in other sports people don't scream in agony and grab whatever part of the body the opposing player hit. They fall over, and immediately jump back up and get back into the game, without pretending to be injured.

Obviously, the point of taking a dive is so that it seems that the contact was greater than it was, and to therefore make the referee more inclined to call a penalty/foul. But pretending you're injured goes to another level, and I think that's where the debate is. Like I said before, if someone does something against the rules, it should be called by the referee regardless of whether you were injured or not. Legal plays do not become illegal plays just because someone gets injured. It happens in American football all the time. A guy will be running with the ball, he gets tackled from behind, and he sprains his ankle as he goes down. But it's a legal play. They don't call a penalty on the guy making the tackle just because the guy he tackled got hurt.

The other problem I think you get is that when people pretend to be injured so often, you won't know when the guy actually needs help, and needs to get off the field. When a guy stays down after the play in American football, you KNOW he's hurt, and a medical team runs out onto the field immediately. Granted, there aren't too many sports injuries where a delay in getting help for another minute or two is going to have any adverse effects on the long-term health of the player, but it's for the 1%-2% of the time that it will.

 

I think we're on cross-purposes here a bit. A player doesn't pretend to be injured to try and make the ref more inclined to call a foul. That's what they dive for. A player will pretened to be injured to try and make the punishment greater.

You're telling me that if say, in basketball two guys jump for the ball, and one elbows the other in the face, but doesn't hurt him, the punishment will be the same if he breaks his nose and blacks his eye? Of course not, he'll get a bigger punishment.

Anyway, I don't like diving for play-acting any more than anyone else. I don't try to condone it, just explain it. Unfortunately, it's seemed to have seeped into the English game with all these foriegners coming into our our league. The Italians, Argentines and the Spanish are the biggest divers and play-acting in the game. The fact is though that it doesn't detract much from the game. Just because a guy tries to feign injury doesn't mean he's wimpy, just that he's snide. Leave them with it if they want to try it, a good ref won't be fooled. The game itself is still just as good and just as passionate.

I mostly watch lower league football anyway, following Chesterfield FC home and away. You want to see some tough football, check lower league football out. No messing around in there.

 

I'm American and I don't think it's a girls sissy sport (that would be tennis ). I was merely mocking your attempt at making soccer seem macho. It isn't. Moreover, it doesn't need to be.
If you like it, then enjoy it, and ignore what others think of it. You like what you like and that is what matters.

Funny, this thread was started by Barmy, who was trying to prove that soccer was manly. Irony, it's what's for dinner!

Now let's stop all of this nonsense about girlishness and faking injuries and get back to...OW! I just got a hang nail typing this! OWIE OWIE OWIE!

 

Actually, the punishment will not be based on the level of injury AT ALL. The only thing that would change the punishment is if the referee decided that the elbow to the face was deliberate or inadvertent.

If the referee feels it was a deliberate act, then the guy gets ejected from the game, regardless of whether the opposing players was hurt or not. In fact, in the NBA, you are ejected for even throwing an elbow or a punch at another player, even if you miss. In other words, the mere act of taking a swing at another player causes the ejection. It doesn't matter if you even hit the guy.

Conversely, if it was inadvertent, whether the guys gets a small bruise, or gets his teeth knocked out, it's just a regular foul, like any other. He gets two free throws, just like any other foul. If he is too injured to continue to play, then whatever player replaces him gets to shoot the two free throws.

I'll spell it out one more time - the fact that someone is injured is not why the penalty is called. The obvious corollary to that statement is that the severity of the injury does not cause the penalty to increase.

 

That's a bit silly. If I was going to foul someone in basketball, I'd make sure to break his leg or nose, or get him out of the game some other way, if I knew the punishment would only be the same.

I'm surprised teams best players aren't simply targetted for injuries in that case. Send on some big burly guy who you won't mind missing, and send him out to break Michael Jordan or whoever in half. Job's half done.

The punishment MUST match the severity of the foul in my book. In footy, for example, if a player jumps into some others knees two-footed with the studs showing, but doesn't really hurt the guym he'll get punished, definitely a yellow and maybe a red. If he breaks his knee or snaps a few liagments or whatever, and forces him too be stretchered off and spend a lengthy time in hospital - he'll get a straight red, and probably be banned for a few games.

 

Absolutely. Where the punishment comes into play is if it was through gross negligence or malice. The one incident that I always think of when it comes to serious injuries is about a year and a half ago in American football, when Donovan Darius clotheslined Robert Ferguson. In the replay you could see Darius's arm come up, and then back down, tracking with Ferguson's head and neck, intentionally trying to cold-cock him. Ferguson could have been killed. As it is, he was lucky not to have been made a quadroplegic.

On the other side, we have Donald Driver (another receiver for the same team) put in much the same situation, not once but twice. He makes a catch, gets hit in midair, and comes down awkwardly on his head and neck. Remember this happened twice and neither time was the tackler called for anything, because they weren't actively trying to injure him, just make the tackle. Intent is the golden standard.

EDIT:

1. That's reprehensible. I sincerely hope you are only speaking in the theoretical sense and would never actually do that yourself in a game.
2. That's also where intent comes in. If you were actively trying to harm him, you can bet your a$$ you're going to be ejected, fined, and almost certainly suspended (hopefully also jail time, but athletes are often above the law ). Professional sports players, like it or not, are role models, and must act as such. Good sportsmanship is a requirement, not an option.

[ April 14, 2006, 19:11: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

Well yes, it has to be intentional...

 

Watch hockey sometime. They have no qualms about being sent to the penalty box for taking a good player out of the game. But it only happens there because they allow it to happen; punishment for that kind of intentional thing is more severe in other sports.

That seems rather stupid to me. If the intent was the same, then what are you punishing? Skill? Injury severity should only affect the fine, as compensation for what you inflicted. If you were trying to break his leg, it doesn't matter if you succeeded or not; the intent was still there. Where "attempted" or not comes into play is only in the legal system, where punishment is meted out (probably just a fine since athletes are above the law as I said before).

 

That was my point. An inadvertent elbow to the face is going to get a regular foul called on you. A deliberate elbow to the face is going to get you ejected, and possibly suspended.

That's why I said the severity of the injury has nothing directly to do with the penalty. Attempting to injure someone carries the exact same punishment as actually injuring someone. They don't reward you for being an incompetent cheater as opposed to a competent cheater.

EDIT: Fel was typing while I was, and explained the same thing as me, but did so much more eloquently than my explanation.

 

"Woah, you should have seen this game the other day, Roberts threw a punch at Smith! it was mad!", "Wow, what happened, how bad was it?", "Well, he snapped his nose, 4 of his teeth fell out and he had to be carried to the hospital!", "****, Roberts'll get a nice ban then"

"Woah, you should have seen this game the other day, Roberts threw a punch at Smith! it was mad!", "Wow, what happened, how bad was it?", "Well, er... he missed", "Chuff me, big ****in' deal then!"

Ok? Get what I'm trying to say now? Big injuries carry more weight, get more press and media coverage and are more likely to get fines / bans later. If he did sod all to him, it just doesn't LOOK as bad, so probably nothing will happen except punishment during the game.

It's all about making things look worse than they are. Which is what I've been trying to say. Anyway 'The fact is though that it doesn't detract much from the game. Just because a guy tries to feign injury doesn't mean he's wimpy, just that he's snide. Leave them with it if they want to try it, a good ref won't be fooled. The game itself is still just as good and just as passionate'. It doesn't effect the game being the best sport on the planet .

 

So, let me get this straight, in soccer, if someone pulls someone elses hair on purpose, then they get in trouble. But if the guy only pretended to get his hair pulled, then it would be ignored, by a good ref?

 

Yeah, Jack Funk, I suppose it's similar to an American footballer only pretending to his nipple stroked, in order to draw a foul .

 

Jack likes to degrade football i guess, probably because Jack never really fully got tackled on the anckles while playing the game.

Oh wait....how silly of me...Jack is not a girl, so naturally he doesn't play that stupid game.

Sorry Jack