Good Footie Players Dive

Good football (soccer) players should dive; and by dive I don't mean the thing you do in the swimming pool; I mean exaggerating a physical contact by another player in order to get a foul & free kick in your favour. Commentators complain about diving during almost every single professional or international football game but that's because they are hacks who like controversy and don't actually, you know, think about things before opening their mouths. Interestingly when the hacks talk to ex-professional football players they don't bat an eye, and actually have to be check themselves from speaking the truth: that diving is just part of the game.

I find it amusing that this unsportsman-like behaviour is so unacceptable when in ice-hockey the anti-thesis of diving - namely fighting - is defended as a crucial part of the game in North America. Both football-diving and hockey-fighting derive from the same problem: referees are fallible. In hockey, fallibility of referees means true fouls often go unpunished, thus teams take the enforcement of the rules into their own hands by sending on the 'enforcer' whose sole job is to go punch the player on the opposing team who has been getting away with fouls against their team. In football, referees fallibility means that diving works, a referee is more likely to call foul if the player acts more injured than they really are.

Since football is a low scoring game and even the number of shots on target hardly makes it to double digits, fouls and the resulting free kicks can make the difference between winning and losing. Furthermore it means if an opposing player is close enough to you to plausibly foul you it is highly unlikely you were going to score anyway. Thus there is little to lose and much to gain by diving.

The question then becomes one of values. What makes a football player good? Is it the willingness to do whatever it takes to give their team the best chance of winning? Or is it the respect and sportsmanship to play ethically even if it means losing game after game? Because just because one player or one team decides to stop diving does not mean the rest of the players and team will so anyone who refuses to dive puts themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Based on attendance at games and viewing figures we have to conclude that the ability and willingness to do what must be done (including diving) to win is the most important. Otherwise we would all be watching the amateurs who have no need to dive, who play for the love of the game to just to win, and not the pros in the World Cup.