Why is diving so common in football and not so in other team sports?
In: Other
Football (soccer for yanks and Aussies) is nominally a non-contact sport. Aside from charging for a space and making shoulder contact you’re not allowed to touch another player. Contact with hands, feet, elbows, knees or heads is a foul.
Obviously a lot of these sorts of contacts happen inadvertently due to the pace of the game, but unless the ref notices and it looks deliberate play will just go on.
In soccer a penalty can give enormous advantage – your team gets possession of the ball, a chance to position your players, possible direct attacks on goal via penalty kicks, and potentially forces the opposing side to adopt a more cautious play style so they don’t risk losing a player due to yellow/red cards.
So there’s a **lot** of incentive to make sure the ref notices and thinks it’s serious, which leads to a lot of players really hamming it up whenever they might feasibly have been fouled.
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