Dive in Soccer
Diving, officially known as simulation, is the act of faking a foul or injury in soccer. Its supporters call it strategy, its detractors call it cheap (and the players that practice it worse), but a soccer player is well served in knowing how to draw the referee's ire to the opposition.
Steps
- Be sure to rid yourself of your dignity. You won't be needing it for this maneuver.
- Ensure that you are near a player on the other team. Diving with nobody around will, at best, make you look like an imbecile.
- Time your dive. While one could dive with no contact, it is very difficult to make it look realistic. Diving is better used to emphasize a real challenge, making a legal tackle look illegal, then it is to make no challenge look like a foul.
- Go to ground. You want to throw yourself at the ground, in whatever manner you choose. However, ensure that it is consistent with the type of foul you are simulating. If you are faking a trip from behind, sprawl out forward. For a shoulder-to-shoulder challenge, fall sideways. To show a shirt-tug from behind, fall on your bottom.
- Fake an injury. This is where you get to emulate the professionals... holding your leg and rolling around in pain. Again, be sure the faked injury is consistent with the foul and the fall. For a slide tackle from behind, hold your leg, to fake an elbow to the face, grab your nose.
- When the referee takes whatever actions he deems necessary, get up, limp for a few minutes (if you faked a leg injury) and get back into the game.
Tips
- If the referee does not stop play for your dive, don't press the issue. Arguing with the referee over a foul he knows was faked is a bad idea.
- A better, less hated strategy is to exaggerate an actual foul. If you're pushed lightly, fall over as if you were pushed a bit harder. This isn't diving because you're just emphasizing the fact that you actually were fouled. This is especially useful in the box.
- Practice simulating various fouls and falls thoroughly before trying it in front of a referee.
- Experience with acting, drama or theater will serve you well.
- Watch the professionals on television: Cristiano Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, some of the older Arjen Robben games, and more subtly Neymar
- Don't dive unless you or one of your players is guaranteed to score the penalty/free kick/corner kick
- Try not to roll because this makes it more obvious that you faked the fall.
- If it is not a foul try and make contact with the other player.
Warnings
- Simulation is considered poor sportsmanship, and is punishable by a yellow card if the referee spots it. Also, your name will get booked for diving, meaning that other referees may be reluctant to take you seriously, when you truly do get fouled.
- Diving may fool the referee, but it will most likely not fool the players. Especially if a player is sent-off for your dive, you may find yourself receiving a true brutal foul.
- Diving is cheap. It ruins the spirit of the game and destroys the sense of fair play in soccer.
- It is also possible to injure yourself while diving, which is simple irony.
- Do not dive unless it is a slide tackle, or if you are a goalie. It's just a bad thing to do.
Things You'll Need
- A soccer game
- Opposition players
- A referee
- Practice
- No sense of fair play
- Drama experience
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