Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Shall we take a trip?
Further to very, very many discussions of the World Cup ... there is a genuine issue of diving and flopping, as everyone knows. But I think it's very much overstated and people don't seem to understand all that well why it is that the rules tend to give attacking players the benefit of the doubt when they fall over. It does break up the "flow of the game", but so does seeing Marco van Basten having his knees kicked out from under him, again. There's clearly a tradeoff to be made, and I don't think it's obviously wrong to err on the side of preventing injuries.
But more generally, I think the criticism of soccer players for being unmanly or lacking in character because they fall over a lot is misplaced. I've certainly seen rugby players who were justifiably proud of their ability to withstand crunching tackles round the upper body and waist[1], reduced to tears by the excruiating pain of injuries to those delicate weight-bearing joints in the lower leg. What would the sports of rugby or American football look like if it was common practice to stick out your foot and trip someone up at the ankle while they were running at full speed? Would a tough-guy real-man's-game player really continue to run on, unbalanced, after having taken a clip on the ankle? I don't think so. Association football is actually quite rare in being a sport in which the most common contact is lower leg to lower leg.
[1] thinking about it, I was always taught to tackle properly in the Welsh style, round the knees. But it's very difficult to injure someone's knees in this way, even at speed.
this item posted by the management 7/08/2010 02:16:00 AM
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