#3 The art of playacting
Trending
Former England and Manchester City defender Danny Mills in an interview with the Mirror recalled an incident in the 2002 World Cup. England were playing Brazil, and Ronaldinho was sent off for a challenge on Mills, “He came in, it was a late challenge, he caught me, I went down and I was about to get up and Scholesy (Paul Scholes) came over and tapped me and said ‘stay down, ref has got a card out, stay down’”.
“He pulled a red card out, it was never a red card, he caught me slightly, it was a booking at worst” he continued.
Playacting is nothing new in football, and on Thursday, Sergio Aguero did his bit. He went and appeared to make contact with Marouane Fellaini’s head first leading the Belgian's headbutt of his own to which the Argentine reacted by falling to the ground as if he was shot by a rubber bullet.
“Aguero's played him there like a fool. What is he doing? He's played him like a fool”, said Gary Neville to Sky Sports, and the former Manchester United defender couldn’t have put it better.
What is clear by these two incidents is that playacting is nothing new in football, and is now easily laid out to the general audience by the hordes of cameras. The analogy of what are we teaching our youngsters couldn’t be further from the truth.
The only way to cut it out from the game remains retrospective action, and although it seems extremely harsh it is necessary to eradicate in what can only be termed as an ‘evil’ in the game we love.
