What is a dive?

[Karl]

Well, Law 12 includes simulation, stating: "A player who attempts to deceive the referee by feigning injury or pretending to have been fouled is guilty of simulation."


So to me, that's when a dive is a dive - when the ref thinks the player attempted to deceive him by "pretending to have been fouled [by diving]". So according to the law - deception matters.


Now - how is a ref supposed to tell the difference between deception and reality? To me, I think it is senseless. If the player blatantly dives and starts rolling around like he got hurt, why not just play on? It would be far better to do so and have retrospective action take place with fines and bans for blatant attempts to deceive. This would be easily done if the ref simply enters the alleged infraction into his report and done. Better yet, require any player who is injured to a degree where play has to stop to be substituted. You'd see how fast that crap stops.

Re: Law 12's inclusion
Yeah! ...and that is the inclusion I find crazy!

Re: Your suggestion
That would be more acceptable.

Aside: Ref's are taught that the first tenet is "Fair play". ...and attached is the matter of protection and assistance for player's suffering physical injury...particualar 'head injuries'. The instructions are stop play immediately and guesture (call) for assistance.

It has happened too often that players seriously hurt were not immediately given the required ref's action. In all of the cases the ref claimed that the initial judgemnt was the player was not hurt.

That said the ref saw the collision and assumed 'no foul' + 'no serious injury'...if even one such is possible for serious injury how many occur where no serious injury occurred. In light of this discussion on 'foul' or 'dive' could there be instances where the ref issued a caution to the player going down for, in the ref's judgement 'stimulation' i.e. attempting to deceive? ...and it turns out the player wnet down as a result of the contact being seriously injuried?

It turns out that that has occurred.

In the Chelsea v BoyU match last, Sagna was kicked the ref saw no foul (no whistle or play on signal given)...Sagna took a few steps before going down. No further challenge took place. ...only then did the ref stop play - deem it necessary to stop play because of the injury suffered. ...boss, limbs can be broken and there is not apparent to the ref that a foul is warranted... It surely is not a sttretch to see where contact of varing degrees could occur and refs see no foul...to take the next step of assuming the player when down solely to deceive is going waaay out on a limb.

It appears to me that some refs just ignore that section of the Law 12 that says punish stimulation. They appear not ready to take on that further guessing game.

Guess the FIFA boys who came up with this new provision may have been thinking either and or - The crowd sees foul when the ref does not...a riot may occur...a bailout is issuing a caution -
a) to tell the crowd they saw wrong (do not believe your lying eyes;

b) protect the refs....and the integrity that would be compromised by a riot?!

I wonder?!

[Peter R]

I don't have a problem with your responses... but you asked why the cards were mainly applied to the attacking players in the penalty area.. I was just trying to give some rationale for that... players who dive would probably do it more often than not in an attacking position because it potentially has the biggest payoff...seems simple enough to me.

[Stonigut]

A dive is going down and there is no resistance or fight to stay up! I have never dived in my life and I have only been kicked down clean once, the idea of diving is directly the opposite of the Jamaican football culture I grew up in.

[Karl]

Got yuh!

[Karl]

That was it!
...you just never even thought about going down if you could stay on your feet!