World Football: Has the Game Become Immune to the Cheating Antics of Players?

This past Thursday in UEFA Europa League Group K Fulham traveled to Poland to take on Wisla Krakow. The west London club lost 1-0 with the most talked about incident being the sending off of their forward Moussa Dembele after he pushed Gervasio Nunez on the shoulder and the midfielder proceeded to fall to ground clutching his face.

As unjust a dismissal as it was for Dembele, it was slightly refreshing that here in England pundits, journalists and supporters alike were actually affronted enough by Nunez's cheating to comment. There is a growing obliviousness to the increasing amount of diving, over-exaggeration and general cheating that is blighting football.

Nunez's deception was an especially blatant example. While Dembele would have been best to avoid raising an arm against a fellow player, it was clearly out of frustration from the initial clash between the two players rather than an act of violence.

The way Nunez went down was somewhat similar to the way Rivaldo fell down clutching his face after having the ball kicked at his leg when Brazil met Turkey in the 2002 World Cup.

The Nunez incident clearly falls into the category of over-exaggeration, because make no-mistake, there is a distinction between that and diving.

Diving has long been an issue in football. Players will fling themselves to the ground without any contact but know they are close enough to their challenger so as to be able to convince the officials there was contact.

What has not been as frequent, but is certainly becoming more commonplace in English football, is over-exaggeration. Players will feel a clip on the heel of their boot or a player's arm brush against their own as they contest with them for the ball and will go down despite the contact being nothing near enough to warrant it.

The worrying thing about this is more and more of those watching games will highlight this as either smart play in winning free-kicks and penalties, or they genuinely believe that the contact was enough for a foul.

This is no call for a return to the days when players might happily kick an opponent without fear of being penalised, but a firm, tough tackle or a footballer using their upper body strength to manoeuvre their opponent away from the ball is an art that is becoming increasingly vilified by officials.

A certain degree of sympathy must be given to referees. In the middle of a hectic game seeing whether somebody has been clearly fouled is not easy, especially if they are at some distance from the play or viewing it at a partially-obstructed angle. But there are also occasions when you have to question their common sense.

When in a good position they are unable to understand that a player who has been tapped on the ankle should not be rolling around as if someone has just shot a bullet in it.

It was a point typified most spectacularly in the recent Merseyside derby when Jack Rodwell was sent off by Martin Atkinson for what was a clean and actually very good tackle on Luis Suarez.

The way Atkinson rushed in suggests there was some part of him that thought there was something wrong about this tackle, but it was a conclusion that was undoubtedly aided in his mind by Suarez's hysterical reaction (and the temerity of Lucas to also react as if Rodwell had assaulted his teammate).

How we have got to point in football where hard challenges like Rodwell's are becoming all but outlawed is a long and convoluted story in itself, but a key theme has been the growing willingness of players to exaggerate and fake injuries. Suarez is a regular offender in this respect but has shockingly got off lightly with his antics since arriving in the Premier League.

Liverpool's first game of the season was a visit by Sunderland, with Suarez getting a penalty after Kieran Richardson was adjudged to have tripped him up. Much of the debate surrounded whether the latter should been sent off for denying a goal scoring opportunity. Instead it should have revolved around why Suarez got the decision when he went down so easily for minimal contact.

Watching the incident it is clear to see Suarez could have remained on his feet but instead he chose to go down. It is a sign of the times where strikers are now applauded for winning such decisions and absolved of cheating because "there was contact."

Nonsense. Cheating is cheating. At least in this incident there was some justice as the Uruguayan missed the resulting penalty.

With Liverpool going onto draw the game, their manager Kenny Dalglish has since gone onto describe the Richardson penalty as one of the decisions that unfairly went against his team this season. Dalglish is coming from a very biased position and perhaps it would be unfair to criticise him for essentially supporting his players. But his failure to call out Suarez for multiple such examples of his cheating this season represents a growing trend with managers.

He is not the only one of course. Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Harry Redknapp, Rafael Benitez, Jose Mourinho—to name but a few—have all had players dive and over-exaggerate. All have either said nothing or actually defended their players.

As with Dalglish it is not unexpected that managers won't publicly lambaste their players. But a willingness to turn a blind eye to these theatrics (or possibly even encouraging them) is hypocritical when all would be quick to criticise their opposition number if one of their team did it against them.

It does seem as if everyone is bad as each other right now. September's European Championship qualifier 2-2 draw between Scotland and Czech Republic saw the latter equalise after Michal Kadlec scored a penalty that was won by a blatant dive by Jan Rezek. The Scottish would have been justified by their complaints if not for the fact that minutes after they tried to do the same when Christophe Berra went down far too easily when he could have stayed on his feet.

Berra was booked, Scotland were hard done-by, but two wrongs don't make a right.

It all seems indicative of a wider footballing public that is either unwilling or uninterested in implementing a solution to this type of cheating. This seems strange when it is a more pressing concern than say the corruption in FIFA or the debate surrounding goal-line technology, at least in there not being nearly enough ambiguity and complexity in the argument.

Is there a solution? The former Liverpool and Aston Villa forward Stan Collymore, now a radio and television analyst, was commenting on the Dembele sending off from the studio for the live coverage of the Tottenham Hotspur/Rubin Kazan game where he suggested the best way of stopping this cheating would be bans of eight, nine or even 10 matches for the culprits.

Collymore's reasoning being that by taking away the main thing footballers love, actually playing football, it would make them think twice about diving and over-exaggerating again. Such are the amount of cameras focused in on most professional games now, it would be relatively simple to retrospectively punish a player like this.

Sadly, as has been discussed in this article, is the growing acceptance of behaviour that is now being described by some as 'gaining a competitive advantage' making it so that what would have been classed as cheating only a few years ago is now a part and parcel of the game?

If nothing else you might think the argument that all this diving and pretending to be hurt makes footballers, a traditionally macho breed, look all rather weak and prissy. But when players in the NFL and American college football are even pretending to be injured now you have to conclude that winning really means that much more.