The World Cup and the Dive – A Question of Basic Sportsmanship and Ethics

I have been a soccer/football player for most of my life.  Alas, the years of play have eliminated all the cartilage between two bones in my left mid-foot and I can only play infrequently in the future, but the memories linger.

As a former wrestler and a person whose center of gravity is lower to the ground (i.e. short), I was very proud of being physically robust and difficult to knock off the ball.  I also had tremendous speed (he says modestly), which is probably the most desirable natural attribute in soccer.  In my playing days I never ‘took a dive’.  It was a matter of pride to me and also a recognition of basic sportsmanship. I was challenged on the ball many times and sometimes knocked off of it, but unless I truly felt there was a foul, I never feigned being hurt or fouled.

 

A dive is a lie in physical form.  A player is depicting a foul that did not occur, play-acting to deceive the referee and obtain a free kick or penalty.  There may be nuances, but there is no doubt that ‘diving’ is commonplace in the sport today.  There have been efforts to curtail it, but it is, if anything, flourishing, and growing in frequency.

 

Many of the most talented players are known for their dive histrionics – Cristiano Ronaldo comes immediately to mind.   But there are also players that almost never dive.  Lionel Messi is one such player and this is one of the reasons (they are numerous) why he represents for me the best of all qualities in a player.

 

Sports commentators and journalists tend to smile and joke about dives when they occur.  They seem to accept it as ‘part of the game’, just as they accept holding and other subtle and not-so-subtle fouls as ‘part of the game’.  This has always astonished me.  Any game is all the worse for every lie, every falsity and every element of conscious bad faith that occurs.  

 

We all know that the stakes are high in the World Cup.  We all know that a lot of money and prestige are on the line.  It is human nature to push and test the boundaries of what is permissible in achieving a win or a goal.  But when we outright sanction the dive or the hold in the name of winning and beating the opponent, then we are abandoning our ethical principles and becoming lesser human beings.  It may not seem a big thing, but I am certain that it truly is.