Football's flight simulation is horribly wrong

The single most disgraceful, vile, disgusting and virulent word in the world of football is undoubtedly ‘simulation’.

Now, I tend to agree that racism is the worst thing in world sport. The sooner racism is stamped out of society, let alone sport, the better.

However, in terms of a putrid activity that has attacked every aspect of the football-specific vernacular, there is no word that makes my skin crawl and bile rise up my oesophagus like the word ‘simulation’.

Simulation is a cancer in world football. It is a deceptively vicious type of cancer as well, because it is a word that sounds like it has a valid place in football and people should take it as an accepted part of the game.

Let us all be clear. ‘Simulation’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘cheating’ or, more pointedly, ‘diving’.

It would be like calling ball-tampering in cricket ‘re-rendering’. Or doping in cycling ‘artificial energising’.

That football the world over has found a way to even legitimise cheating in the vernacular is almost as startling, and as indicative of the headless chicken that is world football as Qatar hosting a World Cup.

Cheating has no place in any sport. The moment you ever allow a tactic that cheats an opponent out of fair playing proceedings, by an intentional act to deceive opponents, officials and supporters, you are essentially saying ‘it is ok for you to flagrantly break the rules of the game’.

Every single time a player swan dives, with pike, Fabio Grosso-esquely with the mere touch of a butterfly wing nuzzling your thigh, it is not enough to say ‘that’s just part of the game’.

It is not part of the game.

Cheating is rather a curable cancer that can quite easily be cut from the game.

What everyone forgets about diving is that it is a consequence of changes to the rules decades ago when you had 11 players who started and finished a game for both teams. Substitutes and red or yellow cards? Yeah, they were not even figments of the imagination.

Back in the day, football was brutal. Like leg-breakingly, career-endingly brutal, much more regularly than you’ll find today.

Substitutions in the World Cup were only brought in for the qualification process for the 1954 World Cup. Pele was hacked out of the 1966 World Cup. Red and Yellow cards were introduced as an official means of making clear whether players had been warned or sent off in the 1970 World Cup.

But what was becoming clear is that players were fearing for their safety, because strikers were essentially facing four or five Kevin Muscats. And that is pretty mean.

So what happened? How did we go from a time where players where scissor kicking each other at the knee and getting a warning, to air swinging at a player’s ankle and getting sent off?

Well, as the NRL are currently realising with the Alex MacKinnon fallout, if you want to sell your game as being safe, then image is everything, and maimed footballers who will struggle to walk again, let alone play, is not a good look.

With that in mind, and considering that it is in your interests to keep players safe (otherwise your best cannot play), you send your referees out with a directive to crack down on violent tackling.

So with the balance now put in the attackers’ favour, and defensive tactics now having to contend with the threat of being sent off, what is an innocent striker or winger to do to remind the referee they have been fouled?

Well, what you do, is you go down. You go down like a… you know. And you don’t just go down subtly. Oh no, you go down with the force of a galloping horse that has just been shot.

Because, how else is an otherwise ignorant referee to know that you’ve been fouled if not for the fact that you are sprawling around on the ground as if you’ve just had your legs literally torn off?

Once referees forgot their directive (to protect players) and simply starting observing players going down (Jurgen Klinnsman in the 1990 World Cup), then the issuing of cards for fouls had started to lose its purpose.

And the progression to where we have come today was only natural.

Why have any concern about possibly being yellow carded for diving, if you might win a penalty, or get a player sent off?

The simple fact is that the well-intentioned governing bodies have allowed their directive that began protecting players to be turned into a tool upon which deception and cheating are ruining the beautiful game.

Even worse, FIFA are legitimising it by coining the term ‘simulation’.

Pathetic.

As such, just as decades ago rule makers saw fit to protect the health of their players, it is now equally imperitive that rule makers seek to protect the health and integrity of the game.

Do what they did previously and return the balance, but this time act in reverse.

Diving needs to be acted upon. For starters, diving should be red carded. Period.

Sure, there will be short term pain as some legitimate fouls will see some players who have been fouled be sent off, but I can guarantee you: if you’re worried about being sent off, you’re certainly going to try a bit harder to stay on your feet, aren’t you?

Equally, for red cards given where replays show a legitimate foul, a player need not serve a suspension.

And if you’re going to video review carded dives, you then review dives that have been missed. You’re found to be diving? Yep, that’s a three-game ban for you, right there.

Because make no mistake, there is nothing at all legitimate about cheating. It is a blight on the game that some commentators have taken to arguing there is too much uproar and concern over, because it is an understandable part of the game.

Well let me tell you: cheating is never a part of the game. Cheating is always an activity that each and every person associated with that sport should be seeking fervently to completely remove from the game.

That diving has weaved its way into the very fabric of the game, to the point where it has been legitimised and now found supporters who defend it, is the saddest thing to happen to football in a similar way that racism and match fixing are a blight on world sport.

It is an avenue upon which players and outside factors can deceive to manufacture an illegitimate result, a very principle upon which any sport should be defiantly against.

And after all, what is tough about diving? At what point did the strength of football become thwarted by that most devious and dirty little act of pretending you are hurt? You watch women’s football, they’re a damn lot more tougher than a lot of their male counterparts doing the rounds.

It all starts by removing the word simulation. Simulation is as bad as the very act it is the name of: deceiving others into thinking it is something that it is not.