Dutch Soccer Player Pretends to Faint After Receiving a Red Card

There are two things I cannot stand in this world—people who don’t tolerate other people’s cultures, and this Dutch soccer flop.

This latest atrocity in soccer drama is brought to us courtesy of Sports Grid's Rick Chandler, who noticed a player in the Eredivisie—the Netherlands’ premier soccer league—fake a fainting spell after receiving a red card.

The player in question was FC Groningen defender Timo Letschert, who was recently tossed from a game after kamikaze-sliding into the body of an opposing forward from SC Heerenveen.

It was a wild and poorly executed attempt at a challenge, and Letschert ended up headbutting the forward in the knee. 

The Dutch defender popped up frantically when he saw the referee draw a red card, clutching his head and motioning to the sideline in disbelief. Put simply, Letschert was blown away by the call—so much so that by the time the camera panned to him after the replay, he was on the ground in a “semiconscious” state.

This is ridiculous, even by soccer’s standards. We've seen players slap themselves in the face with their opponent’s limbs before, but pretending to faint because you want to make the referee feel bad? That’s just baby-town frolics. 

Fortunately, the league isn’t giving Letschert and his daytime-drama routine a pass and has hit him with a three-game ban for his charades. 

Is three games justice? Maybe, maybe not.

All I know is that if soccer doesn’t set a harsh precedent when it comes to fake-fainting in sports, we’ll be seeing it in the NBA and the NFL sometime in the near future.

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