June 27, 2006
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Diving
I've watched my last World Cup game. I'm serious. Last night's Italy-Australia game was a complete travesty with an Italian player diving and being awarded a penalty kick with 12 seconds left in regulation and the score tied 0-0. Game over. The worst part of it was the stupid ESPN/ABC commentator complimenting the Italian guy for fooling the referee. Anytime you start celebrating fraud in any kind of sport, it's time for some serious reform. Soccer in its basic form is a beautiful game, but this is the first World Cup where I've watched a decent amount of games (due to the friendly European time zone), and I am so sick of all these world-class players falling down just to get a penalty call. Don't even get me started on Portugal-Netherlands. You can't even say it's just the bad habits of European players. Witness the Ghana-USA debacle where the Ghanaians were eating grass every chance they got. At least I can be proud of the Korean team. Sure, they were falling down all over the place too, but that's just cuz they're small and feeble. It wasn't intentional. I'm telling ya, I am done with soccer.
Comments (11)
don't give up on soccer yet. it's a beautiful sport...
Korea 2008! Let's go Feeble Devils!
feeble! ha. Europeans play a very physical game. Totti got a yellow card against Korea for diving in 2002, so it's a risk and locke345, it's 2010, not 2008.
i was very disappointed at the dive. the thing is, it wasn't even a tough call. even on real speed you could CLEARLY see that the defender made the tackle and got the ball first and then the italian guy came like a second later and tripped over/dove. the ref was prolly bribed or something. argentina lost in the 1990 finals because of a dive and a penalty shot. it hurts..
Touche kyu. So I was reading through the bios of a few of the players. Apparently a lot of them came on the scene in the U-20, U-19 leagues. How come we never see any of these youth championship games? Didn't the Italians get a tough break against them in the Korea game in 2004?
i don't think anyone would argue that the refs this year have done good jobs. more like really whack officiating. but, as always, bribe or no bribe, blind or trigger happy, they're a part of the game and adds another dimension to the game.
and locke, u mean 2002? get your years straight, buddy.
There's always the World Cup in 2010 ... maybe by then the referees will be better trained in officiating.
yo hooj~! this year's world cup is only disappointing in how the referees do not seem to have any control over the matches... it's so odd to see in a way... how's it going?
Yeah, really, what's up with me and years these days?
hoojer, u will really love this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnYRwhvLR9s&search=italian%20training%20camphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnYRwhvLR9s&search=italian%20training%20camp
Yup, read my post (which I stole from another) on diving. Soccer's fun but there are some real divers out there.