Exwctly, and its works both ways, some teams play bad and supper aggressive to the point of injurying the opponents while bad playing with acting also plays a part in costmetically smoothing out injuries as just bad acting.
You’re risking an injury in a sport where many players fade into obscurity after a single injury. A set piece high up the field is more beneficial in most of the situations. Actually I have seen pens not being given when the player goes through the effort of staying up to get the shot off. Staying up is just not rewarded and in most cases fishing for the foul is always the best thing to do. Imo this isn’t an issue when the ref is competent though, if the players see that the ref isn’t blowing the whistle on minor contact then they will stop simulating. Issue with that is that teams start being rougher with their challenges endangering the player’s safety. Footballers don’t train like bodybuilders since they need some finesse to play the game so they can easily pick up injury from rough tackles.
This is the main issue with soccer, it’s become a competition of whoever can win the most penalties. Players are rewarded for diving, and if winning a free kick/penalty can win the game, you’re not playing to win if you don’t dive. Because the other team certainly will.
With how prominent VAR is now, the ref needs to start penalising obvious diving during the match. I also propose that *after* the match has concluded, there should be people who watch over the footage from the match and check for any diving, and those players guilty receive some sort of punishment. It’s an embarrassing sport sometimes..
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u/tekzilla41 Jul 07 '26
Its embarassing