Robin van Persie’s “dive” raises more questions
Soccerlens has something of a ‘reputation’ when it comes to Arsenal and diving - my attacks on Henry during the World Cup were roundly criticised (by Arsenal fans, obviously), but the point still remained:
In the current climate of football where diving has now become an accepted way of getting the better of referees and opposition players, are the ‘top’ players also susceptible to this affliction?
Steven Gerrard is another respected player who has been labelled as a diver. Yesterday I also wrote about the Giggs foul and how it looked dodgy.
All these incidents, plus video replays of the van Persie foul, makes me wonder if in the name of ‘fair play’ we are in effect holding footballers to highly idealistic standards that are impossible to maintain.
And then there is the van Persie incident. Credit to Arseblog for calling it a dive but I think this is yet another case where we expect too much from players. See the incident for yourself.
Arsenal vs Hamburg - van Persie wins the penalty
Yes, van Persie looks over at the linesman, and yes, it looks like he took a tumble before the keeper touched him. What was he doing? He was trying to win a penalty.
How many times have we tried to use the ‘rules’ to our advantage in order to gain leverage, be it in work, in relationships or in everyday life? The fact is, we’re not perfect - if you put yourself under the microscope like we put these players you’ll have even more shocking incidents of ‘gamesmanship’ and people trying to bend/break the rules.
Bottom line? The referees - with the help of technology - need to stop making bad decisions. All this diving talk is pointless, because it only keeps highlighting how difficult a job it is to referee football matches.
All the latest football headlines.
points well made but the fact remains that it WAS a penalty; the ‘keeper left his leg outstretched in v Persie’s path and, as far as I am aware, there is no rule that says the attacker has to jump over any human obstacle. Also, the fact that the ball would have probably gone out is immaterial, it was still a foul and what v P did was to emphasise this to make sure the ref noticed it. You may wish to call that unsporting or whatever but, within the rules, it was a foul and a correct penalty. Diving when there is no contact is a clearly different matter and one which should be clamped down on.
How would the technology help the referees in this situation? I’m sorry but the replay looks inconclusive and does not clearly tell me whether that was a penalty or not.
I agree that technology would be a massive help for all the offside incidents and the ‘has it crossed the line or not’ ones but in the case of tumbles and pulling of jerseys in the box it is not as clear cut as that.
Oh rubbish! That was a dive! If it were the Olympics he would’ve gotten a ‘4′ for how pathetic it looked. The referee and the person-formerly-known-as-linesman are to blame there for not calling it like it was.
david carthy-
no contact was made you fool.
Xav T - slow motion replays allow refs to establish doubt - at the very least the replay would have prevented the red card from happening.