***Official 2026 World Cup Thread***
- Thread starter ISU3PtLand
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Add in the Miami heat and it goes from hilarious to down right depressing for everyone involved. I’m just waiting for one of the teams to announce they are forfeiting and heading home. Wonder what FIFA would do about that?
This gets brought up endlessly by people that trash soccer. It's usually presented like something that needs to be defended. The funny things is that actual soccer fans hate this too. You quickly learn which players and teams make a meal of a foul.
It's like flopping in basketball or faking an injury in football. I enjoy both of those sports, but I hate the "gamesmanship" side of things.
Trying to imagine the losers of the AFC and NFC title games going after 3rd place on Super Bowl Saturday.
Is rolling around on the ground in soccer any different than the head jerk in basketball? That’s just as prevalent in the NBA as embellishing injuries in soccer. All trying to get fouls called.
Now imagine the World Cup ‘all-stars’ all getting together in orlando for skills challenges and flag-soccer that Saturday
They’d do it if the winner got a higher draft pick. No idea if people would watch though
The head jerk is definitely bad too. It's just more expressive in soccer. I think that the refs should be able to call something when the player is tripped and hits the ground. And not wait to see if he's "writhing in pain". I mean, they do have shin guards on. My 11 year old daughter gets kicked in the shin and gets up and keeps playing. IMO they need to legislate that out of the game. Act hurt if you're actually hurt. I think that a little bit of the American Football toughness would go a long ways here.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
The Playoff Bowl!
They used to have a third-place game in the NCAA Final Four, too.
I mean shin guards cover about 5% of their body, lots of places to get hit that aren’t the shin.
Football players also get to sub in and out as much as they want when they get tired or hurt but not actually hurt.
The kicks and tackles are at a different level than 11 year old girls, but I get the point. But how often do you hit something in your everyday life and need a few minutes for the pain to subside before moving on? That’s the same with soccer. You may not get injured from a slide tackle, but it hurts like hell and you need a minute for that to go away. Once it does, your fine.
Similar in basketball, when guys go hard to the basket and get hit, they’ll stay down for a few seconds or minutes. Doesn’t mean they’re injured, but they’re still in pain.
This game is important to the countries playing in it. Different cultures care differently about different things. Crazy, right?
I don’t get that sense at all from the English fans at least. I guess we’ll see how the players approach it. The starting lineups may tell a lot for who’s in them and who’s not.
Yeah, but how often do you see BB players rolling around on the ground in pain? I mean, Haliburton didn't put on that big of a show when he tore his Achilles. In soccer, you see something like that every game and the guy is playing 5 minutes later.
To be honest though most people bring it up in Basketball and football also. The other difference is the "Dying in agony" part of the soccer. I mean do the flop and if they call it they call it, if they don't they don't. The whole rolling around on the ground looking like a sniper took you out is so annoying. In basketball they do the stupid head jerk back move, which is annoying, in football they do the fake injury for a breather but nobody is rolling around on the ground with their face looking like Mike Tyson just punched in the leg
I don't know of a single person that likes the over-exaggerated injury display. In reality, that doesn't happen as much as people claim. There are definitely acting jobs to draw fouls, but when you watch an entire game you really don't see a lot of the "I've been shot" displays unless you count the compilation videos that people put together.
I guess I just get annoyed at the soccer haters that want to latch onto that one aspect of the game and ignore everything else. I get not liking it, but the repetition of it all gets old.
Most fans have an appreciation for players that take and play through contact versus trying to draw a foul. In addition to being the goat, I can't say I recall Messi diving. I mean, I'm sure he has, but I remember way more times where he gets fouled over and over, keeps his balance, and then humiliates 2-5 people. Whenever he goes to ground, a foul is pretty much going to get called based on his reputation for staying on his feet,
My observation as someone who hasn't watched a bunch of soccer but watched quite a bit of the world cup (for me anyways) is that the flopping issue is overblown in most matches, but a few teams or matchups where one side wants to just ugly the game up and slow it down it can get really bad. If you are not a fan of soccer and watched one of those games it would instantly validate what you don't like about the sport. This may be unfair but it seemed like the south american teams were particularly bad at being overdramatic.
