I am going a little bit off topic here, I normally blog, tweet, talk about football. For those of my regular readers who do not enjoy when I go off topic then continue to scroll down, if I have any regular readers that is (which I probably don't yet, bu they will come in time....hopefully). This time I am going another direction....Soccer. Today I had the pleasure of watching Liverpool vs Manchester United (seriously I enjoy watching Liverpool soccer) with my fiance, and there is one thing that really drives me crazy about soccer, especially European soccer. It's not the low scoring games (even though this one was very high scoring as Liverpool won 3-1), it is not the long stretches of very little action, it is not the annoying accents of the announcers, it is the DIVING!!! For those of you not familiar with soccer the official Wikipedia definition of Diving is:
Diving - in the context of association football is an attempt by a player to gain an unfair advantage by diving to the ground and possibly feigning an injury, to appear as if a foul has been committed. Dives are often used to exaggerate the amount of contact present in a challenge. Deciding on whether a player has dived is often very subjective, and one of the most controversial aspects of football discussion. Players do this so they can receive free kicks or penalty kicks, which can provide scoring opportunities, or so the opposing player receives a yellow or red card, giving their own team an advantage.
Basically diving is the equivalent of professional wrestling in the United States, you know the WWE style. It drives me crazy to no end. While it seems that falling to the ground with little or no contact and rolling around like someone just cut off your limb seems to be an accepted practice in European soccer it should not be. It stops the action, is obvious, and most of the time it serves no purpose. Very rarely do I see someone score immediately after getting the ball back with a dive. And it's not like this happens once or twice a game, it literally seems to happen every few minutes....
The reason why I decided to write this post this afternoon is because of the worst diving/acting I have ever seen. Let me give you the setup. Liverpool was already up in the game (I believe the score was 2-0 which is almost insurmountable in soccer) when Jamie Carragher slide tackled some guy on Man U with the last name Nina(sp). The slide tackle seemed a little bit dirty and made very little, if any, contact with the ball. Jamie's cleats clearly struck Nina in the leg and he went down. The referee immediately blew his whistle as players from both teams ran towards him to plead their case. At this time Nina (who had been rolling on the ground simulating a broken bone) apparently did not like what was taking place nearly 20 yards away, jumped up and sprinted to the referee to tell his side, still not satisfied with whatever the ref said, Nina then grabbed his shin and fell to the ground writhing in pain. Still believing that he was being robbed he played this out until the medics arrived on the field and carried him off with a stretcher. Yes, I said a stretcher! To give you the cliffs note the guy was on the ground in tears (he had to have been crying with the pain he was in), jumped up and sprinted 20 yards to argue with the ref (with a leg injury so severe that he had to eventually be carried off the field with a stretcher), and then fell back on the ground and waited until he was carried off (and presumably taken to the hospital where the doctors stopped taking care of real patients to x-ray his leg, find nothing, put a band-aid on it and give him a lollipop and sent him on his way). This is the real problem with soccer and why it will never be a major sport in the United States, and the diving that the European NBA players have brought over that has damaged the professional basketball game and threatens to ruin it like the strike did baseball, and Don King and crappy matches did boxing.
I will get off of my soapbox and let you continue onto something more productive. Thank you for your time!
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