Posts by vangam
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Dont worry - once Italy have been eliminated next week we wont need an Italian perspective anymore.
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If players fell over every time a shirt was pulled there would be nobody left standing.
In the meantime, Paraguay looked impressive against Slovakia and I think they'll be a tougher proposition for NZ than either Italy or Slovakia.
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Another factor to remember tonight. By my count at least 4 matches so far have been on the issuing of a red card.
the problem is, it is likely to be a kiwi on the receiving end...or not. Come to think of it, those excitable latins are capable of losing-their-rag when the heat is on, so ya never know.
Isn't the football improving now that elimnation looms?
GO THE ALL WHITES!
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And yet apparently they are so easily deceived by the players' theatrics. Make up your mind.
The choices are not mutually exclusive.
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The 'fall easy' accusations need to be tempered against the fact the best players are getting clattered all the time
Cry me a river (as my teenage son is so fond of saying.) Isn't that why we have referees - to police the game? And as far as I can tell, they seem to do a pretty good job on that score. Let the referees police that part of the game and get the players to forget about deceiving the ref, the crowd and the viewers. It is a hangover from the pre-television days: when teams could get away with blatant thuggery because nobody had a record of what occured. Today every other sport has modernised to take account of the greater accountability that televsion has introduced, but not soccer.
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I guess I'm just being driven spare by a game where it seems that any contact between players followed by a dive, no matter how incidental or unintentional, is awarded at least free kick.
Yes, it is very frustrating. The game would be considerably enhanced with an injection of overall honesty, especially when you consider how many goals have been scored from such shameless deception. I'm reminded of Slovenia's only goal against NZ in our last warm-up match.
And havent we been complaining about this in soccer for at least 30 years? In all that time, FIFA haven't shown the slightest interest in taking steps to improve the game.
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@Haydn, there are other Suarez dives to choose from, some of them more clear-cut than others.
If it's hard to differentiate between infringing and not infringing, then it's equally difficult to differentiate between blatantly infringing and not-quite-blatantly-infringing.
There are plenty examples of blatant cheating to choose from - it is those that FIFA should go after; the easy ones, not the difficult ones. Just a few high-profile sanctions will at least show there are possible adverse consequences to be had from such actions.
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They do. But I refer you to the De Rossi pirouettes in the link above - is that sanctionable? I don't think so. Proving complete lack of contact is very hard, and the images don't tell you the force of whatever contact there might have been.
Which is why one could only adjudicate on the most clear-cut cases: where there is doubt, the benefit must go to the attacker. But there have been a number of cases already (eg. Suarez) where absolutely no contact has been made but the player still manages to fall down. Nine-tenths of a laws effectiveness derives from its impact as a deterrent; we dont need to fine every dive, only the most blatant.
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Agree with Gio that it's really hard to pick simulation at the time. And I don't think you want referrals during the match. Football prides itself on its lack of stoppage time, and rightly so.
But what they should do is post-match appeals (like the judiciary in other sports).
They should impose hefty post-match fines on those whom the video evidence shows to be conclusively diving/acting.
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Using a stop-clock I timed the highlights from this evening's games. I stopped the clock for replays and dead-ball moments (like post goal celebrations):
Uruguay v S. Africa - 6.10 mins
Honduras v Chile - 2.10 mins
Spain v Switzerland - 7.15 minsBarely fifteen minutes of football in an hour-long show.