I hate this 'he was touched so had a right to go down' argument. It's a contact sport- if the contact is enough to send you down then you'll go down. If you need to force yourself to the floor then you might still have been fouled but it is a dive.
OK but a dive without contact is a different order of magnitude to a 'dive' with contact that IS a foul. Contact that is not a foul and the player goes down is a dive.
What to do with Bale.. Nothing. The rules need to change. When contact does not = foul, when foul = foul then we'll all be looking at far less diving. Gareth is operating within the rules of the game. So was Suarez, both are crap divers but Bale slightly better than Luis. Suarez got dragged about for 3 seconds before he had to fall over to get the penalty, otherwise I doubt he'd have got it, you HAVE to go down to get a pen
First, I didn't believe Bale when he said 'It doesn't bother me'. The body language said 'It bothers me'. The eyes; it's always in the eyes. The way he fell over wasn't natural. It looked a bit false. Only he can change that. He knew there was a chance of being kicked, he prepared for it. He should have put that out of his mind, carried on running and tried to shoot. It all boils down to him being a big girl. In the beginning it was all the rolling around on the floor after a small tap. Then the time off for the baby. Now it's back to the play-acting again. Forget the diving reputation, that's set in stone. Not even a right-hook to Bale's chin will get us a penalty because of it. Shaking the big girl's blouse reputation has to be his focus. I mean, c'mon, he'll never be a true club legend without growing some bigger bollocks. Even girly-girl Beckham had some fight in him. Get a yellow for shoving your finger up someone's nose, not for play acting. Get up off the ground, big up your chest, spray some ****s and spit in the face of the enemy, take a yellow. If a defender is coming in for the tackle, shove the palm of your hand on their throat. Some no-flinching shin-kicking sessions on the training ground would sort his manliness out which, in turn, will sort his falseness out. please log in to view this image
PNP : Can you extend this to show the subsequent going to ground ?? Then one can envisage it from this view at full speed (as the ref probably saw it) .
Contact does equal foul. When Bale is running at full pelt then all it takes is for a nudge and the whole of Bale's run is disrupted,ended and lost. therefore its a foul surely? Why are players on corners penalised for quite simply backing into the keeper or in most cases even when they are just standing their ground? because thats all it takes to prevent the keeper from doing his job...you dont have to elbow him in the head or snap his ligaments to prevent his movement yet this is not ever questioned.
I wouldn't disagree with that, if that's where you want to draw the line. The only trouble is that it happens a lot every game and also would be near impossible for refs to make those decisions with total certainty at the time.
I assume as a QPR fan you are similarly disgusted when Taraabt goes down and could have stayed on his feet? Or virtually every other player does it, because they all do. What I don't get about this hysteria with diving is why shirt pulling isn't similarly treated. When a defender pulls the attackers shirt they cannot be trying to play the ball and can only be deliberately trying to impede the player. They do it because they hope the ref won't see it so essentially that's as much cheating as diving is. Maybe MOTD should have a segment on whether Shawcross(for example) is a serial shirt puller, highlighting every suspected shirt pull he's done this season(punished or not) and vilifying him, just like the treatment Bale gets. By the by, if anyone's wondering where their post has gone it was deleted because it was abusive or quoting a post that was abusive
Thank you for joining this discussion. We are truly honoured to have in our midst and expert on: 1. Body language and footballers eyes. 2. Human biology in particular the science of balance. 3. Assessing gender. NB I didn't get a chance to catch MOTD - did they analyse it or assess it in any way. The other point is while we're discussing whether it was a dive or not (IMHO not a dive, though he has clearly dived before), we should be actually discussing being swindled out of a clear penalty.
Yep. "On this occasion the referee gets it dramatically wrong." - Alan Hansen "Gardner's not even looking at the ball and he takes his man out." - Martin Keown.
No-one wants football to be a 'non contact' sport but surely the primary item of contact should be the ball. The last three yellow cards Bale has received he has been hit by the opponent who has not got near the ball. If the refs cant see this they should not be in the job.Perhaps all cards should be reviewed by a a panel including former players.
I completely agree, but then the FA runs the risk of it producing results they're not prepared to have, such as if the panel determined Carzola had dived a few weeks back (which was blindingly obvious to everyone except the ref), then the ref would be "undermined" as he had already given a pen for it. They don't like undermining refs (despite hanging them out to dry without video support etc).
Precisely, no-one wants no contact, but contact has to be defined. It has to be part of a fair challenge to win the ball, any contact made with no attempt toward the ball, can only be seen as an attempt to impede the player who has it...a foul. I cannot for the life of me understand why that is so difficult to see.
I think he could thrive there. Though long term, by the time he's in his 50s, I expect him to be a left-back.
For those that are up with the rules: If Atkinson admits or the FA panel admits it was wrong to book him, can they rescind the yellow card?
