An Educated Right Foot

Funny, isn't it, how the words sportsmanship and gamesmanship have two completely opposing meanings.

There's an interesting piece over at The Football Blog (who, I noticed, have kindly linked to An Educated Right Foot) about diving in the game. How, he asks, can we stamp this disgraceful act of cheating out of our beautiful game? A straight red card for a certain dive? Financial penalties on the diver's club? Decent ideas, I think, which would go some way towards eliminating the act of simulation. But ideas, all the same, which I ultimately disagree with.

Much less a blight on football, I think diving has become part of our beautiful game. Going down in or around the penalty area to benefit your team. Why, it's a skill, is it not? That is, if you can get away with it. The act of simulation might sooner be called the art of simulation, not disimilar to the art of bluffing in a game of poker.

Of course, anyone caught diving by the referee should be punished, just as anyone whose bluff is called is inevitably punished. A yellow card is fine, I think, and the occasional red card might make things more interesting. But punishment in retrospect is out of the question, the same as asking for the pot back when a card player shows he was bluffing all along.

Football is beautiful regardless, but diving seasons the game, gives it that added nuance, and, ultimately, gives men on barstools another thing to argue about.

On a slightly related note, the photograph above, taken by one Robert Capa, purported to show the moment that this solider, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, was killed. Controversy surrounds the photograph, however, as many people maintain that it was staged, and that the soldier didn't die at all. He took a dive, in other words. In my mind, the dispute does nothing to harm the photograph's reputation and, if anything, makes it more interesting.