It's referees fault that players dive anyway. Too often shirt tugging and niggling fouls go unpunished as the referee bottles making a decision so the best way seems to be to go down. Now we have pundits and fans trying to decide whether there's any of a foul for them to be allowed to go down or if it's a dive.
As I said the otherday, I give up because I just don't understand it anymore. For example, I simply can't see a lot of difference between these two instances yet one is deemed a penalty and clever play by the media and fans yet one is apparently a terrible dive.
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At most one's a penalty and one's not, yet in the general consensus appears to be that one of them has cheated by wildly over exaggerating the contact whilst the other, who apparently lost his ability to stand up due to a slight pull on the shoulder, is a clear penalty. We all know players can usually continue to play when a defender tries to get physical with them because we see the same players time and time again playing on when they have nothing to gain from going down. Personally I liked that defenders were allowed to get a bit physical and push the line a bit, especially in their own box but now everyone seems to think it's a penalty so long as the player falls to ground convincingly, or under some unspecified amount of force that allows the player to dive. I don't blame either of the players involved, this constitutes part of football these days apparently.
It's a sad part of the game that we now allow our players to act so feebly and get rewarded for it. I remember Neville saying that Dempsey should have gone down under a challenge when we played United earlier in the year and I thought it was sad that even pundits should be encouraging such cynical play. Maybe I would've preferred it if he did go down and win the penalty(I think there was a suggestion of a red too) but I like to think that a player going through on goal should be thinking about how they're going to get the ball past the 'keeper rather than if there's an option for them to win a penalty.