Welcome aboard, Sam Allardyce and Gary Neville. It’s always good to have the company of such distinguished football men in a quest for common sense in football, this time on the subject of diving.
I just hope Mike Riley, who supervises our elite match officials, was listening to what they had to say on Sky about the denial of a penalty to Matt Jarvis during West Ham’s defeat at Arsenal last night. Because a lot of diving is the fault of referees, not players, and that’s why the habit proliferates.
Diving, for such a common habit, is discussed very simplistically. People just abhor it, much as they like motherhood and apple pie.
If yellow cards don’t work, they want reds. It’s only a matter of time before someone calls for capital punishment.
But few players dive for the fun and mischief of it. They are often trying to draw attention — the referee's, or the crowd’s, or both for greater effectiveness — to a foul that might otherwise go unpunished. They may also be seeking to avoid injury by removing their feet from the ground.
And they are playing to rules dictated by the referees. Not any particular one; it was Kevin Friend who failed to compensate Jarvis for trying to stay upright when caught by Bacary Sagna at the Emirates and Mark Clattenburg who, last month, didn’t give Luis Suarez the penalty he deserved after trying to run on despite Marouane Fellaini’s clumsy clip at Old Trafford.
They are all much the same and as Allardyce said: “There’s no reward for being honest.”
Neville, meanwhile, offered an even more depressing analysis: “He [Jarvis] has got to go down. If you don’t go down, you don’t get a penalty. If you can’t beat them [the rest of the world, where Neville believes gamesmanship has always been more acceptable], join them.”
It’s like a cry for help — with no answer.
