Exaggerating contact is not cheating as long as there is contact IMO. Mata celebrating the non-goal is certainly not cheating. It is no different from keepers who claw ball back from behind the line or players appealing last touch was off the opponent in an attempt to earn throwings/corners/goalkicks. It might not be morally right but the football pitch is not a moral battleground. We all try to stand the moral high ground when every team has players that cheat.
In retrospect will young or mata action merit a caution, No. So neither player cheated. You could to some extent say there theatrics influenced the ref if so it is a failing on the side of the officials not players.
Lastly, with reference to young incident, we all know the letter of the law, contact equals foul so why the big debate? In most leagues out side the UK defenders understand that simple concept, I was not a fan of it but having spent a lot of this year watching la liga I see the simplicity in its application and the pure football it allows.
CHEATS!!!
posted on 15/4/12
At the end of the day, none of us know whether it was a dive or not. Space and time are simply a limited framework through which we understand the noumenal world, but we can't really know anything for certain.
are you trying to say that youngs movements were the result of a tackle?are you really trying to defend someone who saw a leg and moved his foot towards that leg then dived better than tom lewis over with a twist as well added . i'm surprised at your obvious lack of honesty
ban all cheats from football including all mentioned in this article to save football from becoming the W.W.E.
posted on 15/4/12
Xiuxiuejar,
I wish you had addressed my comment and found fault with it. You didn't. Therefore, I think you are a moron. Fair? I think so.
Please, do tell where what I said was crap. Young was fouled, yes?! He dived, yes?! Should both offenders not be punished?!
That is my point. It was a foul, it was a penalty and it was a dive.
posted on 15/4/12
the contact was because of young, and football is a contact sport.
He went down because he wanted a penalty. He is cheat plain and simple.
posted on 15/4/12
The contact wasn't because of young. He could not possibly have avoided that. He dived yes, but to say he initiated the contact is nonsense. English posters do lie! 8-2
posted on 15/4/12
Merrysupersteve - in theory your idea is a fair one, but I think it would be difficult to implement in practice. It can be difficult enough for refs to decide if a player has dived, never mind if it is a foul and they have dived also.The fact that they only get one split second view of it also makes it difficult, unlike the number of replays we get (at first glance it looks a clear penalty, only on review does it look marginal)
For me a foul is a foul, and even though Young made the most of it, it was a foul. In general, both diving were there is no contact and feigning injury should be looked at retrospectively and punished if necessary.
posted on 15/4/12
Agree wholeheartedly, kinsang!
It was a dive but also a pen. Whatever abus may claim, there was a foul. But all the focus was on the dive.
posted on 15/4/12
just watched MOTD analysis, and still think it is a penalty.
once there is contact the manner in which the player goes down is besides the point. He could easily have stayed on is feet imo but that is subjective.
posted on 15/4/12
YOU lot make me laugh....Young is a cheat..end off...Give him a red card next time and he might stop???
posted on 15/4/12
Yes that would be the right thing to do. Because a dive is worth a red card, as has been shown many times before. Was it a foul?
posted on 16/4/12
At the moment a dive is punishable by a yellow card, but I think that it should be able to be done retrospectively also when no foul is committed. However, if a foul is actually committed, which for me it was in the Young case, then even though he makes a meal of it, it is still a penalty, and as I mentioned before, it would be a tricky path to go down to award both a foul and book a player for diving.
For me what really needs to be looked at is players feigning injury. Players that use their hands and make contact with opposition players' faces etc should quite rightly be sent off, but the over-reaction of players falling down like they've been hit by Mike Tyson should be punished by a yellow card also - unless a player is knocked out, there is no reason for a player to go down the way they do when such contact is made. The same goes for rolling around the pitch - if you are genuinely injured, you don't roll around, A good example was Balotelli's tackle on Sagna - it was quite rightly worthy of a 2nd yellow, but Sagna's reaction was over the top and unneccessary.
The sooner players are punished for feigning injury the better, with bans for repeat offenders, and that would soon stop this practice.