Bad Refereeing and Diving Steal the Headlines Again!
As i write this, i find myself thinking, what a week we have had. I wish i could say that in response to some excellent football and thrilling encounters. However it is for the exact opposite. Most of the football has been dire and all the headlines have been made by referees and straight up cheating. I would love a week to go by where we don’t find ourselves discussing diving and bad refereeing.
This all began with Ashley Young’s pathetic diving against Real Sociedad. The defender appeared to exert the most miniscule tug on Young’s shirt, which natural caused him to throw himself through the air like he’d been hit by a train. Now of course pulling an opponent’s shirt is a foul according to the rulebook, but if that incident counts as a foul then every single set piece would result in a penalty of a free kick. Young is no stranger to controversy for his theatrics, but what disappointed me on this occasion was the lack of condemnation from his manager. Evidently David Moyes now condones this kind of behaviour. Thankfully on this occasion Van Persie missed the penalty. Sometimes you have to look a bit further than the simple act of diving and ask yourself, would the referee have given the penalty had the roles been reversed? I genuinely don’t think he would have.
Then the weekend came rolling around and Saturday gave us one of the worst refereeing decisions i’ve ever seen. I’m Chelsea fans but no matter how i look at this incident it was not a penalty. This incident does seem slightly different since it is not entirely clear whether Ramires actually dives or not. He is clearly going to ground before he makes any contact with Steven Reid, but whether that is due to him losing his balance or deliberately throwing himself we will never know. What we do know is that regardless the cause, it is not a penalty. It just so happens that Chelsea are trailing at home in the last minute, and from watching the event back it seemed to me like Marriner couldn’t wait to give Chelsea a penalty. As bad as the decision was, this is not the first time this season that a larger side has been given a late penalty to save a game for them. Spurs win against Hull sparked this debate just two weeks ago and here we are again. West Brom were rightly incensed by the decision and no doubt Steve Clarke and any Baggies player were criticise the decision will be handed sizable bans for daring to question the referee. The referee on the other hand doesn’t have to explain the decision and will almost certainly be back refereeing in the Premier League after the international break.
As a genuine fan of all things football, it sickens me to see this behaviour go on. As much as some within the game condemn it, there will always be those who make excuses for the players involved. The uses of phrases such as “he impeded him without touching him” and “simulation”. Lets call it what it is shall we? It’s called cheating, and when players resort to it they are cheating their fellow professionals. Nowadays players seem to have a license to go to ground whenever they feel the tiniest amount of contact (or even the implication of contact). This to me is ruining the game.
Personally i don’t blame Ramires for the Chelsea penalty, i’m not sure he took a dive but it definitely was not a penalty and that decision was completely down to the referee. With the Ashley Young dive i feel it is the opposite. The referee has been conned. It is situations like this i really feel for referees, because more often than not they take the blame for it, when really the player should. As for Andre Marriner, well it is one of the most blatant examples of biased refereeing i have seen for many years.
Next year we will be conducting an interactive experiment to see if there truly are any patterns to refereeing and whether or not there are any biases. Do the big clubs really get the rub of the green more than the small clubs? If so why? Is it the atmosphere, the pressure, the occasion? Or does it come down to something a little more sinister than maybe some would like to let on. There have been no shortage of match fixing scandals in the Italian leagues and others throughout Europe, so what makes us think that the Premier League is beyond reproach? I would be willing to bet that more money is wagered on Premier League games than on any other football league in the world.
It would be all too easy for the FA or UEFA to eliminate diving from the game. Imposing 5 match bans for any player’s caught diving retrospectively would get it out the game for good. Obviously it won’t change the results of some games, but would team still let their players get away with diving, with the knowledge that when they are caught later that day they will lose the player for 5 games. It is such a simple solution and yet it isn’t even talked about in the media, let alone by the governing bodies that could impose such a rule. The reason for this? My guess is UEFA are far too busy fining people who have offending their commercial partners and other such unscrupulous endeavors.
Photo by Alasdair Middleton
About the Author
SYC Matt A football fan just like the rest of us. Battling with the usual ups and downs that come with supporting one of the less glamorous teams. Crusader for footballing justice.
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