The thing that really gets to me is that if theres one team on this earth that doesn't need to cheat, its Barca. I lost so much respect for them in the first leg against RM. Hell, they made Nani and Ronnie seem tame. Messi is not like this. In the second leg he could have went down in the box and probably won the pen but instead tried to score. Thats how football should be.
Really hope they don't pull that crap in the final... Can't see Rooney keeping his cool for the entire game.
Ronaldo's actually been pretty damn "good" his whole time in Spain and was getting better at the end of his Utd career aswell, Nani isn't great, for me its less how often he goes down, but how irritating his reaction is while he's down.
Barca have been bad for a while, and Messi doesn't go down often at all, though the chance he had to go down was outside the penalty area, another ridiculous, reckless and late tackle by Alonso. Hell Mascherano does less reckless cynical tackles than Alonso since they went to Spain.
Thing is Messi did go down easy a couple times, but I can understand it, he's a player who drives past players and very close to them, taking a knock at high speed can cause all mannor of nasty falls and legs tangling up which can cause nasty knee/ankle twists. For me Messi, when he goes down a little too easily is in the catagory of preventing injury/assuming he was going to be fouled, rather than flat out diving. For instance the Mascherano/Busquets/Alves dives were pathetic, they faked contact and pretended they'd been murdered. Messi isn't like that AT ALL, and good on him.
As you said one of the single most frustrating and inconceivable things is of any team in the world they have the least reason to cheat.
Its why I
HATE Gerrard, its the way he cheats, he doesn't feel minor contact and pretend to be shot, he runs into people on purpose then pretends to have been shot. I can understand going down easily when you're Wigan and scared of relegation or the equivilant team in La Liga, but Barca, Utd, Inter doing it is flat out embarassing.
