“Milan’s centre-back Alessandro Costacurta was sent off five minutes before half-time for a foul on Monaco’s German striker Jürgen Klinsmann. Television replays suggested that Klinsmann had hardly been touched and the resulting red card incensed the crowd. Thirteen minutes earlier Costacurta had been shown a yellow card for a foul on Klinsmann after which the German writhed on the ground in agony.”
[Match report — AC Milan 3, AS Monaco 0, Champions League semi-final, April 1994]
[Picture — West Germany 1, Argentina 0, World Cup Final, July 1990]
“Are there any good diving schools in London?”
[Jürgen Klinsmann, August 1994]
I wanted to call this:
"Are there any good diving schools in London?” Mo Salah and the English media's ongoing struggles with its moral compass. But that was never going to fit, was it?
Back in the summer of 1994, the greatest diver in the history of association football arrived in English football. Various pretenders to that crown have come and gone over the years, but this guy remains the 24-carat gold standard, the examples outlined above merely two of the most high-profile, pride-of-place entries in his portfolio. It was the feigning of injury that really set him apart — plenty of professional footballers have hit the deck at opportune moments, but few have ever stayed there for quite as long as this guy regularly did.
And he wasn’t exactly shy and retiring about admitting it either. He began his first press-conference in England by asking the assembled reporters: “Are there any good diving schools in London?” And upon scoring for Tottenham on his league debut in a thrilling 4-3 win away to Sheffield Wednesday, he led his teammates in a group “dive” onto the Hillsborough turf.
They certainly did laugh it up that day, Teddy and co., but surely they would be the only ones? This was England, once home to the fabled Corinthian spirit that “put fair play and moral values above such sordid, vulgar things as winning.” The Corinthians “never argued with the ref or entered any competition where there was a prize,” and if “by chance the other team lost a man, either sent off or through injury, they immediately and voluntarily sent off one of their own men, just to keep things even.” The game had moved on since then, of course, but remnants of the old values remained and it was surely never going to work out for Jürgen Klinsmann in the Premier League in that context.
Except, it did. He scored 21 league goals and even went on to win the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year Award at the end of the season. The players voted for 34-goal Alan Shearer, but it’s safe to say that those journalists were smitten with the German and his 1967 VW Beetle. In truth, Klinsmann kept his copybook relatively un-blotted during his single full season in England, but the laughter that greeted his initial quip about diving schools before he had even kicked a ball in anger for Spurs made you wonder whether it would have mattered if he hadn’t.
This, ladies and gentlemen, was the point, just over two years into the Premier League’s existence, where the subject of diving and the players who do it was first put on the English football media’s agenda in a meaningful way, when something that had always been externalised and largely dismissed as a foreign disease arrived poking fun at itself a mere three years after English clubs had been readmitted to continental competition following the Heysel ban and with the influx of international stars poised to take off in the wake of USA ‘94.
Almost a quarter-century later, the search for a consistent position on the issue continues. At times it is portrayed as the most vile act imaginable (David N’gog can surely attest); at others, it is presented as a smart, streetwise tool in the modern footballer’s armoury. The microscope’s focus sharpens or blurs depending on a variety of factors, which frequently seem to include the nationality and club affiliation of the offender. Sometimes you get the journalistic equivalent of a shake of the head and a wag of the finger, but then occasionally you’ll get an inquisition that lasts for weeks, even months.
And it’s safe to say that in this age of social media, the outrage of rival supporters who cry foul (often when their own team isn’t even involved, as was the case with certain Everton supporters in the past week) while staunchly defending similar behaviours in their own players can also determine the force with which an ever-reactive media responds to such incidents, or alleged incidents, a worrying development in itself given that journalism is supposedly built on a level of objectivity typically beyond the tribal loyalties of your average football supporter.
What all of this has amounted to is a schizophrenic mess where the already-insignificant banalities uttered by your average professional pundit, football writer or manager become even more worthless than normal, as if they have thrown a couple of cans of spinach down their necks ala Popeye and the bullshit emanating from their throats has suddenly sprouted a pair of monstrously deformed forearms that proceed to pummel your ears and brain in equal measure.
As we approach the final hours of 2018, then, and with the current FWA (and PFA) Player of the Year under increasing siege for first drawing the referee’s attention to an obvious foul by Newcastle’s Paul Dummett and then being, well, fouled, in the box no less, by Arsenal’s Sokratis yesterday, the first league penalties awarded to Liverpool at Anfield in some 14 months, I thought it might be interesting to go back and try to paint a picture of evolving attitudes towards the dreaded subject of diving during the Premier League era using what I consider to be a few key signposts and, in particular, try to make some sense of the wildly contrasting attitudes on the subject that are still in evidence to this day (this is all from memory, by the way, so feel free to fill in the gaps).
We begin our story with Klinsmann, and it doesn’t take a genius to imagine Mo Salah getting a very different reaction than the German did all those years ago, only a few months removed from using simulation to deny an opponent the opportunity to take part in a Champions League final, if he asked the assembled media at Liverpool’s next press-conference whether there are any decent diving schools on Merseyside.
But does this mean that, as 2019 dawns, the English football media is looking towards its past and promoting a return to old-fashioned values, much like its mainstream equivalent has done with Brexit? Or is it that they simply don’t like the fact that one of the world’s most talented attackers, who plays for a club they’re not particularly fond of and whose former players in the media are so fixated upon being seen to be neutral that they won’t utter a word to the contrary, and who has been kicked from pillar to post without complaint for a year and a half, has decided to take the advice of one of the media’s favourite managers and become a bit smarter about this stuff, like England’s own Dele Alli, perhaps?
“It’s too much sometimes. There is such a focus on this type of situation. I think it’s a minimal issue.
“Dele is not perfect. Nobody is perfect. He is a clever boy. He is a little bit nasty. Football is a creative sport in which you need the talent that grows in a very intelligent person, a very smart brain. But the problem today is that, more than this type of situation, I am worried we are going to change the game we know.
“We are so focused on minimal details. I am worried that in a few years, the sport we love and that people love to watch around the world, will be pushed into a very rigid, structured thing – with the VAR and with being focused too much on the small actions like this.”
Pochettino went back to a time – 20 or 30 years ago – when everybody “congratulated the player who tricks the referee” and it was possible to feel his inner cynical Argentinian.
But he was on safe ground when he highlighted how English players have never been angels. Notoriously, Pochettino was adjudged to have fouled the England striker Michael Owen at the 2002 World Cup. David Beckham converted the penalty and England had a 1-0 group stage win over Argentina. The contact from Pochettino on Owen was minimal, to say the least. He has previously said Owen “jumped like he was in a swimming pool”.
“You believe that in England you were honest and always perfect,” Pochettino added, with a smile. “That is the football I was in love with when I was a child. Football is about trying to trick your opponent. Yes or no? What does ‘tactic’ mean? When you do some tactics, it is to try to trick the opponent.”
[Mauricio Pochettino, February 2018]
One thing you can say for Pochettino is that, like virtually all South Americans, he is comfortable in his own skin when it comes gamesmanship. The English media has taken a bit longer and isn’t quite there yet, the old values still in evidence when it suits, but they have certainly grown relaxed at the sight of their own players cheating, the most recent example being Danny Murphy producing a late Christmas miracle by magically conjuring meaningful contact to explain away Lord Kane’s booking for simulation against Wolves yesterday (although Alan Shearer at least admitted the obvious).
Last February, Pochettino was forced to speak about Alli in this context because he had been booked for diving at Anfield, for the third time in his Premier League career. A similar intervention by his compatriot Kane
did succeed in tricking the official and was potentially far more injurious to Tottenham’s opponents that day, given that his expert dangling of a leg towards Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius bought a penalty for his side, indisputably the product of cheating. And yet no blinding spotlight shone the England captain’s way after the match.
It’s all a far cry from the scene at Highbury in March 1997. With Liverpool leading 1-0 in the second half of a tense tussle between two title challengers, Robbie Fowler chased a through ball from Mark Wright and got there just before the onrushing Arsenal goalkeeper, David Seaman, who looked to pull out of the challenge once the Liverpool striker touched the ball out of his reach. Fowler then appeared to do what resembled a frog-jump over his opponent, and there was minimal contact if any, but the referee nonetheless pointed to the spot.
The normally mild-mannered Seaman was furious, and in the immediate aftermath Fowler seemed to be appealing to the official not to give the penalty. The decision duly stood, as they usually do, and Fowler‘s eventual effort was anaemic, as though he too wanted natural justice to prevail (luckily Jason McAteer didn’t). The away side went on to win 2-1, although a number of poor results in the following weeks meant that the whole incident ultimately amounted to nothing more than fodder for bantery talking heads compilation shows and Rory McGrath dvds (remember him?)
Fowler’s honesty was praised heartily in the aftermath, however, and he later received a UEFA Fair Play award for his actions. Less than three years after the subject of diving was treated with mirth at Tottenham’s unveiling of Klinsmann, it seemed that there was something of a consensus emerging in English football that honesty was still the best policy.
Undeniably, though, there was plenty of selective blindness going on too. Some 15 months after Fowler’s stand for decency (and, seemingly, for his side dropping points) in north London, for example, his Liverpool teammate Michael Owen would collapse at the merest hint of contact for a very questionable penalty to get England back into the World Cup last-16 game against Argentina in Saint-Étienne. No problem, seemed to be the attitude, play the Argies at their own game, right? Well, indeed. Argentinian Pochettino would no doubt hold his hands up and nod in approval. But surely, then, all puritanical affectations regarding “simulation” should have been left behind in the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard that night too, along with England’s World Cup hopes?
Not so. Diego Simeone, who himself collapsed under innocuous contact from David Beckham not an hour after Owen did similar to Roberto Ayala, became a villain for many in the aftermath. Yet had he, like England’s teenage star, not simply taken a dive under minimal contact to secure an advantage for his team, in this case a red card for an opponent rather than a free shot at goal from 12 yards (and incidentally, I suspect Simeone was as surprised as anyone to see a straight red produced rather than a yellow)? Seen through this lens, and speaking objectively, the demonisation of Simeone carried with it more than a little hypocrisy, although it should be noted that Beckham also got more than his fair share of abuse in the aftermath. That schizophrenia in action again, I suppose.
Four years later, the tables would very much be turned. Speaking the month before the two countries would once again lock horns in a World Cup, and with Simeone having recently and publicly admitted that he had conned the referee four years previously, former Argentina captain and newspaper columnist Roberto Perfumo said that “Simeone did an act and got Beckham sent off. This is not the kind of thing that could have been done by one of your naive, honest English players...English players are more naive. Our game is more calculating.”
The assurance with which the man tempted fate with these words is hilarious in the context of what subsequently happened in the Sapporo Dome. I’ll let Pochettino take it from here: “Don’t believe that English football is fair play always because Owen jumped like he was in a swimming pool. Come on. I didn’t touch him. I promise you. It’s true.” While England won 1-0 with that redemptive penalty from Beckham and moved on in the tournament, Argentina and Simeone went home early.
Many years later, Owen would also admit that he took a dive that day. “Pochettino actually did touch me, clipped my knee. It wasn’t enough to put me down, but the only reason I went down was because earlier in the game someone fouled me. Collina was the referee, one of the most famous referees of all time, and I said ‘referee it’s a penalty’ and he said ‘Michael to know you have to go down to win the penalty.’ He told me you have to go down, so I thought next time I get touched I’ll go down and I did and he gave me a penalty.”
So quite why we’re talking about Mo Salah similarly going down under genuine contact in the box in the final week of 2018, over two decades after events in 1998 and over a decade and a half after 2002, is a mystery to me, particularly in the context of the assorted array of genuine cheats that the English football establishment has collectively exalted during the intervening years. For example, here’s an excerpt from a match report of Chelsea’s victory 2-0 over Manchester City in March 2006:
Drogba’s antics were first highlighted when he went down, in apparent agony, following a challenge from Danny Mills. Replays suggested there was no contact. Drogba went on to give Chelsea the lead with a piece of sublime control and finishing when he converted Eidur Gudjohnsen’s ball. But it was the second goal that was the catalyst for controversy. At Fulham last week he blatantly handled and had a goal ruled out. This time it was more instinctive, but still he handled before he scored the second goal.
Drogba’s reaction afterwards was brazen. “Yes it is [handball] but it’s a part of the game. If Man. City score like this nobody says anything. Everyone wants to make something bad about Chelsea...I don’t know why. Sometimes I dive, sometimes I step over. I don’t care about this. In football you can’t stay up every time. The people who are criticising me maybe should come on the pitch and we’ll see if they dive or not.”
All of us will be well aware, of course, given that Liverpool would play Chelsea many more times before the Ivorian left Stamford Bridge for good at the end of his second stint in 2015, that Drogba’s antics would continue unabashed across subsequent seasons. For example, I vividly remember him going down “injured” on the touchline and then rolling himself back onto the pitch to have play stopped during the first half of the 4-4 Champions League draw in 2009. So, then, given the way they’ve reacted to Mo Salah in recent days, you might be forgiven for expecting the English football media to have had mixed feelings about Drogba, right?
Wrong. As recently as 2015, he was awarded the Football Writers’ Association Tribute Award.
None of this is to diminish Drogba as a person or his charity work, which appears to be tireless, or to refute that he was one of the best centre-forwards of the Premier League era. This is about balance in how players are portrayed for similar, even lesser behaviours. The big-top, three-ring circus that has been under construction around Salah since Wednesday, a player with a strong track record of staying on his feet (perfect examples against Bournemouth and Napoli recently), is both excessive and no less rigorous than anything Drogba was ever subjected to for behaviour that was systematic across the best part of a decade, behaviour to which the player himself explicitly admitted in 2006.
If individuals want to continue carrying themselves with the kind of inflated self-importance that so many of these pundits do, they should at least have the integrity to be objective, to treat every incident with the same level of importance, and to actually try and promote a consistent ideology when it comes to diving and marginal penalty decisions, not what suits them at any given moment in time depending on who is involved. Outright diving or going to ground on contact, different concepts in and of themselves, are either manifestations of cheating that need to be eradicated from the game, or clever ways to gain an advantage. Pick a position and stick to it.
My own preference would always be for honesty on the pitch, but only if it is across the board with the same rules for everyone both in how they are applied and in how such incidents are portrayed. On the latter point, I also have a keen preference for not having my intelligence insulted. This is precisely what Arséne Wenger was saying back in 2012 when, having seen Swansea awarded a questionable penalty during a 3-2 Arsenal defeat, he recounted Robert Pires’ infamous dive against Portsmouth during the Gunners’ unbeaten 2013/04 season. “Pires once dived against Portsmouth. For six months it was a story. Dyer dived and nobody said a word. If it doesn’t matter when Dyer dives, why does it matter when Pires dives?” Amen.
Speaking of Arsenal, a consistent position from the media might also partly, and mercifully, rid us of the kind of self-righteous nonsense that opposition supporters vomit out at times like these, emboldened by a level of objective analysis that is so rarely fit for purpose. For any Gunners supporter who feels aggrieved that Mo Salah was too quick and skilful for Sokratis to handle yesterday and feels that the Egyptian went to ground too easily, I have two words for you: Robert Pires. And here are another three: Eduardo da Silva. Arsenal were once forced to present a “lengthy dossier” to a UEFA appeals body in order to have the striker spared a two-match ban for making a three-course meal (and choice of tea/coffee) out of an Artur Boruc challenge against Celtic.
It’s not just them, of course. For some perspective, I would advise any Newcastle supporters upset that they lost 4-0 on Wednesday rather than 3-0 to go back and have a look at that famous 3-2 win over Barcelona back in 1997 and remind themselves of Asprilla’s full-length dive for the opening penalty. Manchester United supporters can have a look at Wayne Rooney’s dive that ended Arsenal’s unbeaten run in 2004, or remind themselves that Cristiano Ronaldo played for them for 6 years, or go back and revisit the time a highly-decorated former captain said of Ashley Young’s diving: “I think the guy’s a disgrace and if he’s a Man United player I’m a Chinaman. Absolute disgrace, he’s done it far too many times. Look at that. Absolute disgrace.” Chelsea supporters, I realise from first-hand experience, are coy about their own history in this regard, but please: Drogba? Robben? Gudjohnsen? Costa? Hazard? Too easy. And Tottenham supporters won’t have to go back very far, just watch a video of their last trip to Anfield.
We’re all hypocrites to some extent, and that’s ok, we’re football supporters; but the sanctimonious stuff does stick in the craw eventually.
In a broader sense, I’m not naive enough to expect the media not to seize on incidents like these to create their opportunistic narratives and click-bait, but this particular issue has long since become a boring one in the way that the media chooses to handle it. There is a study surely waiting to be done by someone (if it hasn’t been already) to take a one-season or two-season sample of penalties and categorise them into “stonewall”, “outright con” and “debatable”. I would be surprised if a large percentage didn’t fall into the latter category, and in that context it does referees and officials no good whatsoever to call a penalty “soft” when, in actual fact, what you mean is that it could have gone either way. Surely, then, it follows that there was merit in either potential course of action?
We’ll never get agreement on these decisions, so it’s pointless even discussing it most of the time. Just over a year ago, the vast majority seemed to agree with Sam Allardyce’s appraisal that Dejan Lovren’s nudge on Dominic Calvert-Lewin during Liverpool’s 1-1 draw with Everton was a penalty (“You can call it soft if you like, I don’t have a problem with that, but these days you can’t put your hands on an opponent in the box. Don’t mess with him, don’t touch him, don’t shove him.”) Now the same people are going on about football becoming a non-contact sport in the wake of the Salah decisions this week. Good grief, make up your minds.
A little under a month after the Calvert-Lewin penalty, incidentally, when Mason Holgate used his arm to bar Adam Lallana’s ingress to the Everton penalty area in an FA Cup tie, Allardyce’s outlook on hands in the box had undergone a dramatic 180° shift. Jürgen Klopp surely summed up what many of us would have been thinking: “I thought that both decisions weren’t penalties but everyone told me after the first one that it was a penalty, so I learned this.”
On Wednesday, days before he was tweeting about loving rock n roll, Carlos Puyol asked “¿Para cuando el VAR en la Premier?”, meaning “when is VAR in the Premier League?” shortly after the penalty decision against Newcastle. And after yesterday’s debacle for Arsenal, Unai Emery said “the two last goals, two penalties, I think it’s a lot for us. I think VAR is important. It’s coming next year because I think it’s going to help the referees to take better decisions.”
The implication was clear but, firstly, good luck with that — we’re coming off a World Cup year where the referee spent about 5 minutes at the sideline poring over footage of a marginal, subjective incident for France’s penalty in the final, one that some
still swear he got wrong (and not all of them Croatian either). And secondly, all three penalties, especially Dummett’s funnily enough, would have had to have been given, regardless of VAR replays from even 50 angles. A different set of questions would have been asked otherwise.
Well, questions will always be asked. “Are there any good diving schools in London?” is a famous one that gave a group of football writers a good laugh back in the summer of 1994. I get the feeling there are quite a few diving schools around England these days, not least in one part of north London, but if one exists on Merseyside then they really need to get their act together because that’s still only 3 home penalties in over 14 months for one of world football’s most potent attacks. The good news for opposition teams is that Mo Salah will always try to score first if afforded the option, of that they can be certain in my experience. He’ll always back himself, and why wouldn't he? The real question is whether his opponents have the speed, of body and mind, to stop him fairly. That’s the question.
But hey, no worries if they can’t quite manage to answer it on their own — plenty in the football media will always be on hand to act as their “phone a friend”.
