I mentioned earlier in the season, that I was brought up at school with the rule that you cheered your own team, applauded the opponents but never ever booed. This ethos has stayed with me all my life and when ex-players or managers return with a new club, I find the booing they are subjected to, quite infantile.
There is one circumstance when I have some sympathy with those who boo. This is when players cheat. I think there is enough British spirit of fair play left in fans and they have no other way of illustrating their disapproval. It’s a pity that Cristiano Ronaldo who is one the world’s greatest players, is no stranger to being booed because he is rightly regarded as being a cheat.
Many spectators feel that, when players dive, it should be easily spotted but it is no way as black and white as often imagined. Players go down with the slightest push for instance and then exaggerate the effect of the push, falling down in a dramatic manner. The referee has a decision to make. Is it a foul, or is the player cheating, or was he just trying to assure that he gets the free kick. This is the situation I personally hate.
As a referee, if you give the foul, it seems to the opponents that you have been conned by the player’s theatricals. There is however no difference in the laws between a big push and a little push. When they changed the laws and pushing and tripping no longer had to be intentional to be an offence, then it opened a new era for those prone to cheat. The referee can no longer
say ‘I didn’t think the players intended to trip you’ - so players go down at the slightest provocation when previously they might have stayed on their feet.
So what referees are faced with is two factors,
Fabrication and Exaggeration. Fabrication is, of course, when players make out they have been fouled when they haven’t and exaggeration is when they magnify the effect of the tackle or push.
There is another form of exaggeration and that is when they player over does the extent of his injury after a challenge, often writhing in agony. This, I feel, is particularly pernicious as it is usually done with the purpose of getting the referee to take some form of disciplinary action against his opponent. For a referee to accuse a player of cheating, or
simulation as it is called in the Laws of the Game, is of course a serious charge. It is a cautionable offence, so he has to be careful not
to jump to conclusions either way.
If the referee doesn’t have a perfect view, a player’s over exaggeration may turn the decision against him, but the referee won’t issue a yellow card for diving because he can’t be sure. A referee will sometimes judge whether it is a foul or simulation by a player’s unnatural movement. That means, a player who is unexpectedly tripped will usually put out his hand and arm in front of him to save himself from the fall. A player diving on the other hand will go down with his arms outstretched. In other words like a dive. But that also happens sometimes when it is just exaggeration.
Many players, particularly when they have lost control of the ball will now run deliberately at the legs of an opponent and then go down. Ronaldo is very adept at this. Recently on televised matches I have seen him run into opponents' legs and call for a free kick on three occasions. One occasion the referee fell for it but the other times the referee saw through the play-acting.
The Premier League referees say they have reduced diving. Perhaps they have, or perhaps the cheats have just got cleverer.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008