In principle, the FIFA World Cup is one of the most amazing cultural events on Earth.
Only during the Olympics do we see the same global collaboration between countries all competing against each other for one common goal.
It’s one of the few times Americans get the chance to act obnoxiously nationalistic without feeling judged as the burger-eating, gun-toting, Wal-Mart shopping stereotypes. The "Miracle on Ice" USA chant is still the coolest chant in the known universe and every time I hear it, I feel as if I just watched Sylvester Stallone knock out Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV."
The World Cup features the most internationally recognized athletes in the world, an incredibly simple set of rules and a lack of commercial breaks that makes American sports broadcasts look like one long Ford F-150 commercial. It’s hard for a sports fan such as myself to just ignore this spectacle.
So this year I decided to follow the Cup closely and catch it on TV whenever I had the chance.
The first few matches I watched were pretty entertaining. Last-second goals and upsets were common and I began to see the appeal of the whole thing. At the same time I wondered why the sport hadn’t caught on as much here in the states.
But as I continued watching, one ugly aspect of the sport really got under my skin – the players’ constant flopping in attempts to fool referees and generate yellow and red cards.
At first it was just an annoyance. Player A runs with the ball, and as player B comes in to try and steal it away, the two graze calves. Player A, sensing an opportunity here, egregiously flails his appendages into the air and flings himself to the ground, grasping his knees like he just blew every ligament south of his pelvis.
Then, player B gets a yellow card.
Maybe 10 minutes later, he makes an utterly miraculous recovery and comes back into the game unhindered, despite having to use a stretcher to get off the field.
Annoying, sure, but up to that point this “diving” hadn’t actually affected the outcome of a game.
But then the Mexico vs. Netherlands match happened. As the Netherlands sent it to extra time after a dominant Mexican underdog performance with a 1-1 score, Dutch winger Arjen Robben performed a dive so deliberate and well executed it probably made Mark Spitz proud.
As Robben dribbled the ball toward the goal, Mexico’s Rafael Marquez barely touched his foot, but he sold the “foul” hard enough to draw Marquez’s second yellow card and eliminate him from playing in the next game, ultimately giving the Dutch a penalty kick and handing the game to them on a silver platter.
What was most frustrating was after the game, there was actually a discussion on whether the flop was, indeed, a flop, although obviously it was. Had LeBron James flopped that hard in a game, it would’ve turned into a meme and swept SportsCenter’s “Not Top 10.”
I understand gamesmanship, but the amount of diving that goes on in this sport is absurd, and when it can consistently alter the outcome of a match it totally compromises the game’s legitimacy and makes it borderline unwatchable to anyone who has ever seen a professional athlete’s capabilities.
If FIFA wants situations like these to stop, they need to change the rules about diving. If a player goes to the ground for any reason and stays there, they should enforce a 20-minute minimum until they can re-enter the game.
Maybe then players would make the shift from acting to, you know, playing.
