The debate rumbles on... the referee made a mistake. Probably because he was somewhere near outer *****lia at the time of the incident. But referees will continue to make mistakes for as long as there are referees, and you have to deal with them. After all, it wasn't Halsey's fault that Villa scored nil.
Couldn't care less about diving. Nothing we can do about it. Clearly nothing the FA or FIFA will ever do about it, so as in encroaching at freekicks or nicking 5 yards for throw-ins, its now "acceptable gamesmanship"
One of my biggest gripes with this topic is actually the word 'dive'. I would rather see the word simulation used by everyone, especially the media (and indeed isn't this what the laws themsleves use?). Just because a player didn't 'dive', does not mean that he hasn't exaggerated his movement. A player can be touched, but then exaggerate his fall. He's not dived, he's clearly been caught, but he's exaggerated his fall. Only recently when Bale got booked for his fall in the penalty box, I read a lot of people saying that he shouldn't have been booked because there was contact. Well yes, I clearly thought there was contact too, but so what? For me, contact shouldn't instantly rule out the possibility that the player has cheated - and I take that view to the extent that I don't actually see why you can't have both a foul being given, and the player fouled being booked for simulation. The only thing that the contact on Bale told me, is that he hadn't thrown himself to the ground unaided (like Defoe did in the exact same game). It didn't tell me that it was or wasn't a penalty, it didn't tell me that Bale had or hadn't simulated.
Yawn. Ref has already said the pen was for Guzan's foul on Puncheon. So saying Rodriguez dived means nothing.
Hey, I'm unbiased, I would also have given a retrospective 5 game ban to Izale McLeod after his disgraceful dive against Crawley earlier this season too. I'm not the kind of person who blindly defends my own team when they act like twats.
I really dont think it was a dive today. The way i saw it was he poked the ball on for Ramirez to (woefully) shoot and tried to not get his ankle broken. Imagine Match of the Day might prove me wrong, but until then that is what i shall believe.
Postponed because we're incompetent. Luckily for me, I had 'only' reached Eastleigh and been on the train for an hour when I found out What was it for then?
He's the goalie right? From the video I've seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5x18vCdoNg that looks very much as if it could have been a foul, however from the angle, it's impossible to say if he got the ball or not so I can't really say.
