Does diving get too much hate?

There are a lot of ways to gain an unfair advantage or con the referees in football. Defenders grabbing on to attackers on corners, intentional fouling on counters or dangerous situations, sneakily handling the ball, asking for an offside/throw-in/corner even when you know it's not the right decision. Diving gets a disproportionate amount of hate. I find it ironic because diving atleast has some justification in that refs find it hard to spot fouls unless the attacker embellishes and makes it obvious. In this sense, it is just trying to re-balance the game or correct the odds.

What do you guys think?

Yes. A dive is less morally reprehensible than a potentially injury causing tackle in my view, and the (predominantly anglo saxon) media and fans have their priorities upside down. It's not as much of a problem outside of the UK and US though.


Also this issue would be easily solved with instant replays, yet another reason to add...

Yes. Or at least, I think people make WAY too big a deal out of it.

The bad tackles you see are far more damaging and the player gets way less shame for doing it. And this is by todays standards where players are getting carded for very little, the tackles were even worse before.

There are many bigger problems in football.

I view diving almost the same way as Neville.

No.

Diving and other play-acting are deliberate attempts to fool the referee. Yet at the same time players and managers get mad at referees all the time for apparently not being good enough. I don't know where else you could find such double standards that on one hand you try to deliberately mislead the referee and on the other hand you tell him off for making poor calls.

Nope, players and managers 90% are upset a refs because there is no consistency. They are mad because one week its ok to hold someone shirt in the box for a corner, but next week its not ok.

Of course, you dont get a pen when you think it was..your upset, but thats not exclusive to a dive, that is handball, thats shirt pull, its anything in the box.

Actually I think it's kinda cool because not everyone pulls it off. Requires cunning tbh

Sometimes it gets annoying. I'll just talk about my own team. For example when Suarez plays with back to goal and he feels a bit of contact on his backside from the defender he'll immediately go down in the embryo pose, holding the backside of his knee with one hand, raising his other hand to the air to signal to the ref that he is in pain with total agony on his face as if a truck has hit his face. It's not even "diving" as there was contact but it's annoying to exaggerate in such manner.

But yeah, English pundits in particular make far too big a deal out of it. It's football, not 17th century club of honourable gentlemen tea party meeting.

Diving is so much more difficult to spot than a bad tackle or a shirt pull,so yeah its hate is justified.

If every one started diving it will ruin the game, because its damn difficult to spot diving.

I think a distinction has to be made between straight up diving and going down easily. Going down easily is just a response to the brain dead modern refereeing culture where a foul isn't a foul unless the player goes down. As annoying as it may be, I don't really see anything wrong with this, in fact there are cases where I would be upset that a player didn't go down when he could've and gotten a penalty.

Diving on the other hand I think is just as bad as the media makes it out to be. It's blatant and deliberate cheating, on the same level as Suarez' handball against Ghana in 2010. As BC said, replays should absolutely be used to get rid of this. Even if they don't want replays during the game yet, I think they should absolutely be used retrospectively to punish diving harshly (thinking a one game ban).

No.

If there were any proper people guiding this circus called football they would change things because the behavior of plays is at such a pathetic level that I can't help but be disgusted and put off occasionally.

First of all, allow only team captain to talk with the ref. Players storming referees and their pathetic reactions to his decisions are straight up repulsive, especially when we see the replay and they are lying. Sanction diving so harsh so they never even think about it. Bring in technology already. Who knows how altered is the course of a match by a wrong offside call or a disallowed goal...

I think it depends. On one hand, when there is contact and a player goes down easily I always understand it. You might have a case and I understand players doing what they can to win the game. I've never dived but I'll go down with contact unless I think there is an advantage to staying up every time. Most of the time it's a legitimate foul.

Diving without contact I can understand from the player point of view as Neville points out, but from a viewer point of view I think the hate is justified. I don't think it's the end of the world and I don't think that it's as bad as the tackles some thugs in EPL put in that could ruin a career on a regular basis, but it's something that I do think should be stamped out or I think there should be an attempt.

That being said, it seems to get more hate than other forms of cheating, like Ozil scoring with his hand, or Maradona doing the same, or holding a player to a ridiculous extent in the box knowing you won't get called. In this, I do not agree. It's attempting to cheat/cheating all the same.