@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:I guess my position on the issue of flopping (in any sport) is that if the foul isn't egregious enough to actually cause you to fall down on the ground and be out of play, players shouldn't exaggerate anything. It's an attempt to exploit technical rules instead of an honest struggle to win on the merits.
I don't think you understand football very well if you think only knocking a player to the ground should be a foul. Holding a player's shirt, jostling in the box on dead balls and many other scenarios would cede technical skill to physical play if that is the litmus test for a football foul. This is not supposed to be a full-contact sport, do you also think slapping your shooting hand, without knocking the player down, in basketball shouldn't be a foul either? Should a handball in football not be a foul either? The "no blood no foul" types of mentalities turn the game from an exercise in skill to a contest of thuggery.
Football is suffering more from fouling than flopping.
Quote:As a contrast to today's game, I watched the Germany-Uruguay game yesterday and found the lack of flopping to be refreshing and the pace of the game to be extremely exciting.
Sure, but the blame lies with the Dutch who used fouling as a strategy to stay in the game against a vastly superior technical squad. It's no coincidence that the least skilled squads are the foulers and the most the "floppers", those without skill kick, hold and push.
Quote:It isn't a problem which is equally spread out amongst teams, which tells me that some absolutely exploit it as a strategy.
No kidding, some teams have technical players, others rely on defensive tactics, including fouling. This game was a foul-fest, not a flopfest, and that is obvious to most who understand football. There is
real flopping in football (even fake blood has been used), but also a lot of Americans who don't understand how little physical contact it takes to gain advantage over technical play.
Pele almost quit playing the world cup for this reason, teams took a "break his legs" approach to tactics. Players who can dribble get fouled in football, and the stiffer teams tend to foul more. That's why you'll see that the most notorious flopping schools are also the ones producing the most technically skilled players, and the best dribblers.
Some teams just pass around, knock down the other team's good players and score on deadballs, these tend to be the northernmost teams. Southern teams (Latin America especially) tend to play more technical and less physical football and are accused of flopping more (English league allows for much more physical play than Brazilian for example).
I prefer the art of skill, not the art of manhandling. I don't watch football to see who can foul the hardest (there are good sports for contact, football isn't one of them). I don't want to lose the Pelés of the world to those who merely have no compunction against playing dirty.
