But what has any of that got to do with players who “act” (cheat)? Surely, we can all agree to condemn cheats irrespective of nationality or colour or their footballing skill? The unarticulated premise of your argument appears to be that it is ok to simulate (cheat) if you are a skillful (Brazilian) player. It’s a bad argument.

How many World Cups has Brazil won? How many has the “tuff”England have?

How many Brazilian player have won the FIFA player of the year? (7 if you didn’t know). Any englishmen?????

So tell me, if you had the choice to be reborn as a brazilian, or as an English?? 5 time world champion, or have a single title way back in the day.

The reason hardly any brazilians are in the Premier League is because they’re winning style of soccer does not fit in the ugly, brut, and unsuccessful soccer England has.

Oh, by the way….Have fun sitting down and watching the Euro Cup together with the entire English team.

Some players do the acting very badly i.e. it is so theatrical that they are easily caught out, particularly with the ubiquitous camera lens. Some other players give a more “professional” acting performance, making it more difficult for the match officials to detect the deception.

In my view, whatever the quality of the acting performance, one type of cheat is just as bad as the other. Both deserve condemnation. The player’s nationality is irrelevant.

Robert Rojas: That’s a really good example I didn’t know about, and it falls perfectly in place with the other three I mentioned in my article (actually, it’s on a level which is even worse). Absolutely disgraceful… slashing yourself with a concealed razor really goes to extremes. It’s not even embellishing a foul play, it creating something that wasn’t there in the first place. It’s good to see that back in the late 80′s, they weren’t afraid of banning players for life for this type of stuff.

Arjen Robben: Pure comedy, once again. Though Reina should have kept his hands down, he left the referee little choice (especially considering Reina’s previous tackle on Gudjohnsen might have deserved a direct red as well).

Slaven Bilic: The video The Times linked to doesn’t show it very well, but if Bilic had been hit in the face with an open palm, than can potentially really hurt. Still, from what I remember of the incident back in 1998, it was universally recognized as play-acting.

All the other examples aren’t so much meant to simulate intent to injure, but rather con the ref into giving a penalty or a foul. It’s still play-acting, but falls under a different scope than the cases we’ve been talking about I think.

As the link shows, no nation or continent has a monopoly on cheating. The Brazilians in refered to in Marco’s article may simply have done their acting (i.e. cheating) a little less realistically than some others. As actors (or is that actresses!) they “ham” it up so much that it is easy to expose them. The reward for all such players (or is that play-actors?) should be both ridicule and punishment.