Div(e)ine intervention
By the end of last decade, the footballing world finally began to accept a ground reality that was being ignored for ages: rampant racism in the stadium. Europe was evidently the epicenter of this menace and it wasn’t ironic that the FIFA officials who eventually made a strong move towards weeding out racism were mostly Europeans. As of today, the racial outbursts by fans persist but it’s not overlooked anymore. Appropriate actions (read: sanctions) are in place for unruly crowd. Safe to say that the fight against racism is a slow progress but a progress indeed. Thus, once again proving that a problem can be solved only after its existence is registered. Denial leads to festering of a predisposed mentality.
Which brings us to another problem in the footballing world today: shameless diving by footballers. The greater problem is FIFA’s lack of grit in seeing things the way they are. Barcelona’s recent comeback against PSG was epic although the aftermath was somewhat diluted by Luis Suarez’s obvious diving to score a penalty. Yes, he’s not the first footballer to do so and he is certainly not the last. In fact, if you are a football fan — and not someone who only watches matches involving his/her favourite club — you’ll notice that not a weekend passes by without footballers playacting in the penalty area to fool the referees. More often than not, they succeed in cheating. Besides, you can’t always blame the referees either. Unlike us, the spectators, they don’t have the luxury of slow-mo action replays.
There are many reasons why diving isn’t allotted the criminal status it deserves. One must have to go back (again) to the ending of the first decade of the 21st century to understand how diving was making its presence felt on the TV. It’s not like footballers didn’t dive before but thanks to technological leaps, their videos were sharper than how broadcast used to be in the 20th century. The ignoble act was so obvious that it should have shamed the diving ballerinas who appeared fatally threatened by the breeze. Oh, the luscious beauty of falling to the grass with the gentlest of touch! The key scoundrels of that era were Didier Drogba, Cristiano Ronaldo, Arjen Robben, Sergio Busquets—amongst many others who had vertical inclination in the box. These were the repeat offenders who not only made it cool to dive but also set the trend for others to get away with it. Had the governing bodies taken action against this malpractice back then, things wouldn’t have been so cringe-worthy right now.
So, why exactly the FIFA manages to keep quiet on this topic? Well, they tend to listen to the Big Dudes of the top-5 leagues in Europe more than anyone else. And the managers of illustrious (read: moneymaking) clubs like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, etc. weren’t keen on raising the issue. They still aren’t. Why so? Because they know for a fact that they benefit from diving. Not a club from this elite group can claim that they didn’t/don’t have a footballer who dived and won a penalty. So much so it took the manager of a smaller club like Burnley to come up with a stern position against divers. The big clubs have bigger priorities: win at any cost.
If this scum of a trend isn’t eradicated soon, we’ll have to make peace with the perversion of a sport that deserves better ethics. And if this is too much to ask for, at least the divers should be put in a room and made to watch their antics on a big screen just like Nazis were made to watch the atrocities they committed during the Holocaust.
