Stop the real cheats

NOV 3 — Two words have hogged the football headlines over the past week — “diving” and “monkey.” The former is associated with foreign players, while the latter with black players and the taunts they receive from fans of opposing teams.

Both issues hurt the image of the beautiful game of football, but between the two, it is diving that can and will destroy the game unless football administrators are truly serious about eradicating the menace.

Yet, we are reading and seeing more reaction to the monkeying around than the diving performed by players week-in week-out.

Racially-motivated taunts are not the result of racism in football. Instead, football is just an innocent passer-by as it occasionally encounters the scum of the greater society that is out there, and who happens to be attending a football match.

Racism is not going to hurt football, because players will survive and move on. Let the other supporters take care of the miscreants in their midst. However, it is diving that will bring the game into disrepute, destroying careers, while also hurting the fortunes of clubs and its supporters who put all their heart and soul into following a particular club.

You may think I am exaggerating but think of it as the “butterfly effect” in football. The actions of one player, taking flight, flailing arms and all, as he hopes to wrangle a freekick or penalty from the referee, can cause an opponent to be carded, a team to lose a match, relegation, loss of income and, in the worst-case scenario, going bust over financial losses.

Yes, I have a wild imagination. One dive in one game is not going to do all that, you say. The thing is, we do not connect it as such because we seem to think everything evens itself out in football.

Well, let me tell you, it does not. That is like saying, “Oh, don’t worry about the snatch theft you fell victim to because over the next few weeks, you are sure to win first prize in the 4D lottery … because everything evens itself out.” Well, if it does not happen in life, it sure as hell does not happen in football, as people hope.

Diving is, and must be treated as, a mortal sin, to use the Catholic point of reference in terms of classifying the seriousness of wrongs that one might commit. If Moses was a football-supporting prophet, number one on his list of 10 commandments will surely be “Thou shalt not dive nor play-act to gain the favour of the match official.”

But how do we get rid of this menace when referees are only human and do not have the benefit of looking at instant TV replays. Well, the one simple process which can easily be adopted and enforced by FIFA or even at the English FA level is post-match review of such occasions.

I rather that the authorities hire more people — there are hundreds, if not thousands of former players who could be roped in — to review the controversial moments in the many games where an alleged dive may or may not have taken place.

This can be done within a week or two of the matches. Only players are to be judged and punishment is to be effected once there is any confirmation that a dive had taken place. 

Players who have been wrongly judged must have their cards or dismissals reversed, while players who got off scot free in a match will be suspended for at least three matches. Player suspensions will hurt their own pocket as clubs will in turn deduct their wages for the loss of services, besides them losing appearance and win bonuses.

Besides that, their teams will suffer too from the needless loss of a resource on the pitch.

Diving is one aspect of cheating in the beautiful game that just does not merit enough attention for all the bad it brings to the pitch on a weekly basis. Calling it by any other name, i.e. simulation, does not change its cheating nature. So, it is time for the authorities to act on this for the good of football.

And as we enter into the weekend’s round of football in the English Premier League, do note too that it is not just the foreign players who are easily going to ground these days. The early kick-off tonight between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford might showcase the simple but well-executed dives of a few English players too.

That they happen to be black, and so could be referred to as “diving monkeys”, would not solve anything. Instead, it might only serve to take away the attention from the greater crime of diving that these players have been prone to commit in matches on their way to winning freekicks and penalties.

To paraphrase The Beatles, “All we are saying … is give cheats no chance.”

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.