yep. Suck it up tbh. He's by no means the most voracious or the most insistent. Just watch John Terry for proof.
Edit. Someone posted inbetween - I was agreeing with those above
its worth noting however that in the very first game without mourinho in charge the ENTIRE TEAM was noticeably absent from harrasing the referee all game long, and terry was much less of a tit than normal in that sense.
remember, owen never used to be a diver, nor most of the england team. do we not remember the instant sven took over that suddenly the whole freaking england team(and only for the england team) they all started to fall over as if shot anywhere that was a good position for beckham to take a free kick, remember beckhams flinging himself over, a virtual solo backflip winning a freekick. gerrard likewise in the most recent cup i think the first game(or maybe those friendlies just before) he threw himself to the ground about 3 yards from anyone and got up and looked rather embarassed.
i think its mostly managers, some decide cheating is fine, a lot of the players who miraculously started diving started to do it more and more in the premiership and now gerrard does indeed dive constantly. sheffield utd i think end of last year, 3 penalties in a game, two won from gerrard, one with minimal contact, one where he was 2 yards clear of anyone.
the penalty yesterday, the shirt pulling they were both doing it. but watch the replays, for NO REASON his right foot suddenly goes off to the right, infront of hibert, in a position that was completely unatural, there was no contact, he forced the contact by pushing his leg over, also his left foot, he suddenly decided to just drop to the ground, you can actually see his left foot about to hit the ground completely normally and he just pulls it away and goes down.
he dives constantly and its a joke, ronaldo is still a big softy, but has gotten soooo much better than he was in the first season. there is also the case of extremely fast players, especially more lightweight ones, a slight tap at high speed can knock you off balance, and sometimes jumping over a tackle is better than going straight into a tackle and risking injury. thats not particular to ronaldo, lots of players have that issue and it can be hard for a ref to tell the difference between avoiding injury, diving, and just a plain old foul.
but the one thing, forcing contact like gerrard did is fairly plainly obvious. its just completely not natural for his leg to do what he did, he dived and the ref fell for it, then the ref was affected by gerrards words, then the ref failed to give at least one stone cold penalty to everton. not to mention the 2nd penalty for pool it looked an almost certain handball from voronin i think just outside the box before was it macherano took his shot. then even from the shot 2 players were offside, though i don't think whoever shot after that was. but pennant was very VERY close to being offside, but crappy angles and it wasn't clear.
overall liverpool deserved neither penalty, everton probo should have had at least one, neither everton player should have been sent off, gerrard should have been carded for dives. sissoko again spent the entire game passing badly and going in violently on everyone. kuyt isn't normally dirty, but 99% of games thats a red card and carragher gave away foul after foul after foul, and had that long LONG rant at the ref and gave away a penalty in the dying seconds yet only recieved one yellow card late on.
diving is one thing, competant refering would see diving become totally useless.
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