Hmmm. I was originally going to advocate a four match ban for a Pederson level dive. 🙂
Such blatant, obvious, dumbasss cheating should be punished

....Maybe your punishment for bad acting could be applied to the TV and film industries......

IBL wrote:

A dive should be categorised as 'there being sufficient enough contact for the player to go down', so no bullshit where the player feels the slightest of touches and decides to do a swanny.

As soon as you make it a normative judgement, you're inviting a world of criticism. Take Ramsey's penalty appeal against Swansea, there's no consensus even on here whether he was tripped or went down easily or was just a bit clumsy

The sufficient amount of contact is variable as well, there's a video somewhere of Christ Samba going to ground when Berbatov barely tugs at his shirt. Now, Chris Samba could withstand gale force winds if he had to but, equally Berbatov did pull him down and sought to gain an unfair advantage himself. So, do you award Blackburn a penalty and then send Samba off?

There are also times when a player stays on his feet when he'd be better off going to ground because he's being fouled. But since he stays on his feet, the referee takes the easier alternative - understandably so - but the chance has gone. All it takes is one arm across the shoulder and in that case you probably should be a little light on your feet.

There are simply too many situations to effectively deal with the problem. The occasional yellow card from the referee is the only acceptable trade off between punishing divers without being overly severe and opening a can of worms every weekend.

Possibly, if a player accumulates as many cards for diving as Bale has, then you can haul him up in front of a panel and discipline him severely but a ban for every perceived dive will not work.

General Mirth wrote:

Possibly, if a player accumulates as many cards for diving as Bale has, then you can haul him up in front of a panel and discipline him severely but a ban for every perceived dive will not work.

It sounds reasonable GM, that someone like Bale should get a "please explain" letter but there again- there could be arguments over which cards were merited and would someone like Michael Owen who was an England pin up boy and notorious diver be treated differently than "an obviously" dirty nefarious Sth American like Suarez?

Football is such a simple game but it has millions of intricacies, as you explained in "what is a dive?" you could have added sometimes a player neither dives nor is fouled but simply loses balance loses the ball and then he has to make a decision in his mind.........
You can legislate all you want but it won't change human nature.

Again - with the 4th official watching the telly he could help the main ref to make a better decision. How is that bad?

Because like us watching on telly we can't actually see whats going on around or the speed it happened at in other words the true context.

What does context has to do with a dive, bad tackle, head butt or whatever?

Yea, context has nothing to do with a lot of things that are punished incorrectly/not at all.

Just get rid of "professional" fouls altogether. Straight red for violence/recklessness only. The rest should be two yellows. It's bad enough conceding a penalty, don't need a player sent off too. That could at least lessen the impact of some dives.

Biggus, you know about technology, right? Makes doing the same stuff easier, right? The decisions are the same, the tools are better. Ref on the pitch is always king, but he's got a fucking bluetooth and he can have someone he trusts giving him his opinion from the video replay. Ref still makes the call. Dunno how you can argue that, it's common sense and only adds to the game, takes absolutely nothing away.

Does using a fork take the "human error factor" out of eating?

Depressed Rex wrote:

What does context has to do with a dive, bad tackle, head butt or whatever?

Everything, look at the Ramsey/Newcastle incident we've all seen it several times and we still can't decide what happened, don't give those cunts a chance to go to a commercial break while the game is stopped for 3 minutes while everyone studies the replay, the ref should (presumably) be up with play let him decide straight away.

@ Coombsy technology is fine for saving lives but I don't want too much of it in the game, we all understand that mistakes are part of it and whether we admit it or not we love to discuss them thats why we're here - right?
Thats why I'm against goal line technology as it is the thin end of the wedge, we're talking about it for diving now ffs where will it end?

Football is interesting because there is always an element of chance and uncertainty, who wants to watch a game where that's removed and every tiny incident dissected? Thats not a game thats an experiment.

Biggus wrote:

don't give those cunts a chance to go to a commercial break

😆

@GM I agree with what you're saying re: what can be regarded a dive. Like I said, with all the camera angles available these days these incidents can retrospectively be looked at comprehensively and a decision made. I remember a Suarez incident earlier this season where he won a penalty and it looked like a blatant dive, however to be fair to him on this occasion it was genuine foul but this was only proven to be the case from one particular camera angle where it can be seen that his standing foot came down and was hindered by the defender causing him to fall. He doesn't however help his case by throwing himself down with arms up ala sniper target.

Diving incidents will never be clear cut but examples such as those in the opening post with Suarez, Bale and Gerrard are as obvious as day as well cringe-worthy, all deserve to be punished.

Wouldnt want replays during the game for a panel to judge during games though as it'll slow everything down.

You've all been to games where a ref blows for every little thing and everyone groans collectively.......It would actually destroy the game as we know it IBL, time outs/ref explaining decisions/video reviews fuck all that shit.......

Football is a fluid flowing game lets keep it that way.

Loads of sport have vid replays and none of them have been ruined.

In the same way Fox can replay a goal 3 or 4 times causing the viewer to miss a few seconds in play (Fabregas' goal against Spurs come to mind, I don't think anyone watching on tv saw that live because of the replays), then a fourth referee can sit and review footage of a player diving.

Games are also stopped for a multitude of other reasons and its why we have stoppage time. If the fourth referee takes a minute to review a dividing decision then said minute gets added on at the end of the match.

Its hardly a ground breaking idea and if it helps to eliminated bad decisions from the game and promote fairness then I'm all for it.

squallkid wrote:

Loads of sport have vid replays and none of them have been ruined.

Stupid shit sports- I rest my case.

Biggus wrote:

Football is a fluid flowing game lets keep it that way.

So aren't replays of goals akin to video replays for diving decisions.

Just because its your opinion that those sports are shit doesn't give validity to the claim that video replays for diving will ruin the game.

Diving and other forms of cheating ARE ruining the game and something has to be done.

squallkid wrote:

So aren't replays of goals akin to video replays for diving decisions.

Nope, when a goal is scored the ball is out of play, usually for only a minute and most people would want to see a replay 2-3 times, nobody either in the stadium or watching on tv wants the game stopped for some vertically challenged prat, if the ref thinks he was fouled- penalty if he thinks he fell over- play on if he thinks he dived- play on and then card him at the next break in play simple.

squallkid wrote:

Just because its your opinion that those sports are shit doesn't give validity to the claim that video replays for diving will ruin the game.

Diving and other forms of cheating ARE ruining the game and something has to be done.

Yes it does, I think all sports that are start-set piece- stop are shit, carry it to its logical conclusion and we should do away with open play and just have penalty kicks, would you like that?- Plenty of goals no diving (except from the goalies).

So you want to leave it totally up to the referee's discretion?

Fair play but I don't think games should be decided because of a mistake/cheat.

If the football world can do something to make the game fairer for all parties involved then they should do it. Referees aren't perfect, they make mistakes and play is stopped throughout a football match for a variety of reasons and that is why we have stoppage time.

Its not like diving arises in every game despite what the media would have you believe and not all penalty decisions are questionable in the first play, a replay would only need to happen once in a game if at all.

If Fifa wants to make it even fairer to all involved then each team gets 1 appeal per match for any contentious decision whether it be goal line clearances, a sending off, dive, handball, anything that their little heart desires. That way there would only be 2 stoppages.

No what you suggested isn't its logical conclusion, slippery slope and hyperbole at its best.

squallkid wrote:

So you want to leave it totally up to the referee's discretion?

Fair play but I don't think games should be decided because of a mistake/cheat.

But football is life and life is football, in life things are decided by mistakes/cheating/moments of brilliance, you can't have some sanitised little fairy tale where everyones a winner and lives happily ever after.

squallkid wrote:

If Fifa wants to make it even fairer to all involved then each team gets 1 appeal per match for any contentious decision whether it be goal line clearances, a sending off, dive, handball, anything that their little heart desires. That way there would only be 2 stoppages.

😆

Whether you like it or not, I think technology will become part of football soon. Its already late in my opinion.