No Blood, No Foul Revisited

Whether you are a regular viewer of soccer matches or you only tune in every four years during the World Cup, you have probably noticed one very aggravating trend (no, not vuvuzelas): Players grabbing their face and falling in agony any time they are touched above their waist. This is done in an attempt to get opposing players red carded and ejected, thus giving the faking player's team a one-man advantage. Soccer fans have grown accustomed to a certain amount of embellishment when it comes to fouls, but this is too much. It is extremely dishonest and makes the faking player look like a complete idiot when the replay shows them to be acting. The problem is, the referee can't look at the replay and is often fooled by the player rolling on the ground and holding their face, and rewards their antics by ejecting the player they think has done the harm. This situation occurred in Sunday's Ivory Coast-Brazil match, and Brazil's Kaka was shown his second yellow card and sent off for barely touching Kader Keita's chest, but the referee bought Keita's hands-to-the-face dance and punished Kaka. This is not a call for video replay in soccer, as that would slow down the game and only raise more questions about how to implement it then it would answer. So let's go old school. In the event that this scenario has happened, the referee will go to the player holding his face and do a quick examination. If there is blood, a black eye or some kind of mark or welt, then he gives a card to the player that struck him. If there is nothing, the faking player gets a yellow or red card, depending on how childish his tantrum is. No blood, no foul. This is the World Cup, not third-grade recess, and if you can't act like a man and play fair then you don't get to play at all.

England's Telegraph newspaper put together a recap of some of the worst incidents of diving and fake injuries in recent history. Take a look at it here.