'Sometimes I dive and sometimes I stay up, I don't
care about this.'
Didier Drogba, Saturday 25th March 2006.
There may have been some confusion over semantics of the English language but the most obvious interpretation of Didier Drogba's
It's nothing new of course - most football fans know who the 'divers' are but it's clearly the debate of the moment in the Premiership.
That said, there have always been (and always will be) those players who fall to ground at the slightest of touch - those for whom winning is more important than how you play the game.
Franny Lee, Jurgen Klinsmann, Robert Pires, Rivaldo - j'accuse! But in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the Premiership, with fame and wealth at stake, and super slo-mo cameras trained on every controversy, diving now seems all pervasive.
Diving is so much more insidious than other forms of cheating - drug takers get caught, a foul is usually punished with a free kick, blatant hand-ball - Maradona aside - normally spotted. The diver on the other hand has now perfected his art.
It's subtle, hard to detect, seldom clear-cut. Referees are undoubtedly being conned, as are the match going public. With Sky Sports cameras now trained on every minute detail, each foul is analysed and debated but to date the sole arbiter of what is acceptable - and what isn't - is the court of public opinion.
Recently it is Chelsea that has come under most scrutiny with the aforementioned Drogba, Joe Cole, Hernan Crespo and Greg Louganis impersonator-in-chief Arjen Robben all accused of crossing the line of acceptability.
In truth, although coach Mourinho's Porto side was to a man, diving, time-wasting cheats, Chelsea are no guiltier than any other Premiership side when it comes to the black art.
Reputations do tend to stick however and Drogba will now find himself a marked man. Witness Manchester United's Ronaldo, once the Premiership's worst offender, but now regularly denied even when genuinely fouled, despite cleaning up his act at the manager's belated behest.
Then there are those who are prone to feign grievous injury - their legs whipped from under them at the slightest touch. Robbie Savage is the Premiership's worst offender - a man who could start a fight with his own shadow but is poll-axed whenever a fellow professional breaths in his vicinity.
Or Brazil's Rivaldo who went to ground clutching his face when the a stray ball had struck his legs! It may not be diving but it is cheating all the same, with the aim of getting an opponent dismissed.
One thing that has changed however is the argument that only 'foreign' players dive; that somehow the English game was the last preserve of fair-play. This is patently nonsense - and probably always was.
Gary Lineker, 1986, England vs Cameroon, and Michael Owen, 1998, England vs Argentina will both attest to the value of falling over an outstretched leg or goalkeeper's arm.
Yet the powers that be rarely act with the same level of alacrity as their frequent rhetoric suggests that they should do. When is the last time a diver was punished by the video panel for cheating? Answer - never!
And this is essentially the problem. While some referees will pull out the yellow card for the most obvious of tumbles - the badly acted ones - this is still a rarity. For the most part diving is a form of cheating that has many rewards and very few drawbacks.
But Premiership managers are very much at the core of player's behaviour on the pitch too. Sir Alex Ferguson - in public at least - drew a veil over Ronaldo's theatrics when he first landed on British soil for far too long. Arsene Wenger is utterly blind to the cheating of Robert Pires, for example, and Jose Mourinho is utterly dismissive in the face of overwhelming evidence of his player's wrongdoing.
Fans are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the level to which football has moved from being entertainment, in which players strive to win, to a win-at-all-costs business in which entertainment comes a poor second. Clearly, for the sake of the continual growth of the Premiership it is time for the FA to put up or shut up.
There are only two ways to remove diving from the game. One: enable the FA video panel to review incidents at all levels - not just those players in the 'big' teams who come under most media scrutiny anyway.
This initiative must be about addressing the crisis, not paying lip-service to the problem through good PR. Two: punish managers alongside their players.
Public naming and shaming has a remarkable behaviour changing affect. Above all managers too must be accountable for their player's good conduct on the pitch.
The result - players who serve suspensions for cheating or who are benched by their club coaches. Either way, it is the football cheats, not the match-going public that find themselves on the sidelines.
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