Diving - Either make it legal or punishable

Football, the game of speed; the game of passion; the game of ups and downs. But nowadays, this sport is also known as game of cheating; game of diving; game of controversies, and the game of wrong decisions.

Football is played with fierce speed, tempers are always flaring high as rockets. Not just players, but also among the fans. Between such hot-headed games, there is always a likelihood of a player cheating for the goodwill of his team, for a bad advantage, though it is still an advantage for his side.

But this cheating, most commonly diving, is not tolerated by opposition players, fans and condemned all around the world. Even better fans will always oppose their team for using such bad tactics. But the governing bodies should take up the responsibility of putting things in order.

The Earliest Attempts Of Diving

Being the most popular sport, football also has a rich history. During olden days also the act of diving must have been prevalent. Now the oldest occurrence of diving, of which I am aware of, created a huge stir with the referee flashing the red card highest number of times in a match.

The event is also known as Battle of Bombonera which happened in 1971. The match was of the competition called Copa Libertadores of South America, between Boca Juniors and Sporting Cristal. The match was tied at 2-2, when in the closing stages Boca’s player Roberto Rogel went down in Cristal’s area when their player Million was trying to clear the ball. Boca shouted for a penalty, and Cristal equally opposed it stating that he dived.

What followed was a major brawl, with players chasing each other with the corner flag, players getting kicked badly, and officials weren’t able to separate them. In the end, police came into action, after which some players spent the rest of the night in jail, while others who were injured were admitted to hospital. The referee later revealed that he red carded as many as 19 players, leaving out only the 2 goalkeepers and one Boca’s defender, Julio Melendez.

Diving Is Like A Cancer

Recently, Luis Suarez of Liverpool dived against Stoke City, which created huge furor among the football fraternity with the vice-president of FIFA, Jim Boyce, terming Suarez’s act as disgraceful and calling it as a disease. Now I leave it to the readers to decide whether the actions of Boyce of singling out a player were right or wrong.

But the act leaves a permanent dent on the club. Star clubs and their players have many a times suffered from this disease. But their act leaves a billion hearts broken. I understand things happen in the heat of the moment, but making it a habit is what bites most of the fans.

What FIFA Can Do:

Punish The Act

Football is already laden with the never-ending controversies of Goal-line Technology (Will they ever use it ?), Offside Drama and now the fresh ones in Dangling Dives. In the end, the referee is subjected to harsh criticism from football pundits and fans who think they are the football pundits. But a single person in such a big arena, with so little time to react, cannot have his eye on all of the things happening.

If the regulatory bodies can take decisions on whether a goal was an own-goal or not, or a player deliberately attacked another player or not, or charges of racism once the match completes, then why can’t they take action on diving. They can take lessons from another big league like the NBA (National Basketball Association) where such acts are monitored and players are fined their salaries depending upon the number of times the acts are committed.

Legalize It

If they can’t punish it then make it legal. After this, there won’t be any criticism over such acts. Instead, commentators might start saying, “What a great dive it was. Wonderful… Perfect to the core!”, or fans remembering some players for their dives and saying, “Had that dive hadn’t happened to perfection, the trophy wouldn’t have been ours”.

With Player of the Month award, there will be awards for Dive of the Month. Best players getting the award of Ballon D’or and best divers getting Diver D’or or whatever. Tournaments having highest goal-scorer will then also have highest dive-committed by a player.

Best game developers in business like FIFA, PES can come out with Dive versions of their games. In this, along with player attributes like Stamina, Dribbling, Shoot, Sprinting there will be an additional attribute of Diving. You decide who will top the charts in that category.

Conclusion

All I intend to say is if you cannot eradicate diving from the game, then you are polluting this beautiful game which has been followed at such an enormous rate. With no action taken against such acts, there will be always criticism, and no justice will be provided to the teams and fans who suffer because of the culprit’s lack of sportsmanship.

And if you can’t stop it then reward it, so that players in addition to cultivating their football skills, also work on their dives. A dive in water creates ripples in it, similarly a dive creates great ripples all around the world. Now whether these ripples will be of appreciation or depreciation, let the Godfathers of football decide.