Dive at your own risk: FA to punish blatant divers found with the intention of cheating

Starting the next season, anyone found guilty of reckless diving upon video review will suffer punishment for cheating. The FA is seriously looking at kicking things up a notch to eradicate the ‘cancer’, as FIFA vice president Jim Boyce called it.

Former striker for England, Les Ferdinand, one of the top 10 all-time Premier league scorers, is taken aback by the amount of diving going on in current times. He strongly believes FA’s efforts will prove efficient and even subside the issue of players misleading referees.

“If you ban these divers for a few matches then that will soon eradicate this problem. It is becoming part of the game and it really needs to be a problem we are well rid of — and this would help do that. Let’s face it, diving is rearing its ugly head every week or so. And what we have to do is get back to when people would only go down if they were on the end of a hard tackle.”

The new rule is taking shape, with Gareth Bale already being booked four times before a one-match ban for diving. However, the Tottenham Hotspur winger claimed that he was only trying to get out of the way of nasty tackles than swindle the referees.

“There is one problem — that is when players are running at such pace that they need to jump out of the way to avoid serious injury. That’s a separate issue. So it’s about making sure retrospective action just targets the blatant dives. They are the ones we are talking about that need to get stamped out.”

Ferdinand said, once executed correctly, it will send out a real message to divers and keep them at bay. He says -

“I believe most problems in life can be solved by tackling them head on.”