Anyone who's watched a professional football match cannot help but notice it. Players will suddenly fall to the ground in agony, screaming and rolling around. Then, incredibly, they jump up and start playing again as if nothing had happened. They are not really hurt –they are faking! They call it "diving" and it's become a plague in today's football. In fact, a recent study of 32 World Cup matches found 293 incidents of suspected diving.
Football has incredibly changed in recent years. Footballers were athletes, they played with pride. Now they become famous for other reasons, for instance the fashion, and this fact causes that football teams and their components very often are burning issues just because they want to attract attention from mass media. Nowadays, football teams are not respectful; they are able to insult each other publicly and they are constantly trying to wreck the image of the opponent's team inside and outside the playing field. .
Diving has not always been so prevalent. Before World War II, players with serious injuries just continued playing. Biographies of footballers from earlier years suggest that concealing pain and injury was seen as an important tactic in the game. Players never wanted their opponents to suspect they were hurt or that it was easy to intimidate them. .
Attitudes towards injuries started to change in the 1970s and 1980s when football authorities became more anxious about serious injury to players. As a result, referees started penalising players who caused injuries. Over time, players saw the advantages of getting hurt during a game. Players causing injury were punished or even sent out of the game. Your own team could get a free kick or a few minutes to rest while the referee was dealing with the injury.
When it became evident that injuries could benefit a team, players began acting as if they were hurt. Although a player suspected of diving can be penalized, in reality this rarely happens.
