As you all may know, I am a Celtic FC fan.
And as you may also know, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the club about diving recently.
I just thought I'd get my two cents in about it here, seeing as the BBC Sport 606 boards where I lurk doesn't exactly welcome people giving an opinion - I'd be likely to get a lot of backlash about it from Rangers fans and Arsenal fans and probably my own fellow Celtic fans.
This whole thing starts with the second leg of the Arsenal-Celtic game last week. We were already losing 2-0 on aggregate but the game stayed at 0-0 for a long time and we were playing reasonably well considering we were most certainly the underdogs. About twenty minutes in, Eduardo, Arsenal's striker, fell at the edge of the box and won an
incredibly dubious penalty for his team, putting them ahead. He claimed that our goalkeeper, Artur Boruc, slide tackled him. Artur Boruc claimed no contact was made and went practically beserk when the penalty was awarded. With good reason too.
[link]This video shows what happened from the angle that is most revealing. As you can see, Artur held his arms back and attempted to prevent making contact. Point being:
there was no contact made. Needless to say, we lost the game. Arsene Wenger, the manager of Arsenal, defended Eduardo which any good manager would do. Whether he thinks he dived or not is unknown, because he changes his story every other day. Our manager doesn't really seem to care, but we feel cheated, and I'm sure the team does too. We would have lost anyway - we only managed to claw one goal back and have fallen into the Europa league instead - but the fact is, Eduardo cheated and got away with it. If the ref thought Boruc had made contact, why was he not booked? Why was he not red carded? A two footed tackle is enough to earn punishment, at least a yellow card. Instead Arsenal were put a goal ahead.
Arsenal fans are now claiming we're 'sore losers' and we've already been labeled as 'the nastiest, most vindictive supporters in the game'. Why? Because we find diving wrong?
Anyway, fast forward to this Saturday just gone, when in our 1-0 defeat of Hibernian FC in the SPL our winger Aidan McGeady was yellow carded
for diving. He had already gained a yellow so he was sent off, fair enough. It's hard to tell if contact was made, but if he did dive (which he may have done) he deserved punishment as anybody trying to cheat the game does. I personally don't think he did, but that's only because he's a player known for skipping around tackles in the box to cross the ball in, and he's had plenty of opportunity to fall and receive a penalty or a free kick. Thing is, he 'dived' in the middle of the field, where there was nothing to gain, with the ball at his feet. Fans of many other teams are now laughing, saying we're accusing other teams of cheating when we harbour cheats ourselves.
EDIT:
This comment from the above video pretty much sums it all up:
-
FACTS:
1./ Was near half way line
2./ Tackler stated McGeady didn't dive
3./ Hib's manager stated McGeady didn't dive
4./ 4 camera angles - 3 of which suggest contact (1 inconclusive and doing rounds with the paranoid)
5./ Celtic got punished - down to 10 men.
-
I didn't know about the tackler and the Hibs manager said anything (though as Mowbray said it happened right in front of the dugout) but if that's true then we've been punished for nothing. McGeady's got a temper on him, but as I said before he's never done anything of the sort in the past, he's a very fair player. A lot of people are saying this is our fault because we alerted refs to diving because of the fuss we made about Eduardo.
Point is, Eduardo dived in the box to get a penalty and a
scoreline advantage and McGeady dived for nothing. There is not doubt in my mind that Eduardo did dive (there are actually photos of him laughing about gaining a penalty) but he has not been punished for it and the ref of that game and Wenger himself still continue to deny that he may have dived, even the possibility that he did!
I for one am fed up of seeing teams try to dive to win games. Every team does it. Even Celtic have done it, I hold my hands up. No team is innocent. Take Shunsuke Nakamura (ex Celtic player) who dived on the edge of the box. He was caught out and punished. Aidan too, has been punished. But how many times have I seen it go
unpunished? Hundreds. Rangers have done it, AC Milan did it twice against us (
who can forget the
Dida incident?*), Arsenal seem to do it all the time...it's not as common in Scottish football teams (except Rangers) as it is with English teams, but it happens nontheless and should be stopped, even if it means suspending our best player as an example. All these rumours of McGeady only being booked because he 'refused to play for Scotland' or Eduardo being sympathised with because of his injury should be put to one side. Aidan got into trouble because it's suspected he dived. Eduardo got off scot free because he, unlike Dida, is good at making his dives look real. Now us Celtic fans may be 'nasty' and 'vindictive' for wanting to see a cheat punished, but it's pretty clear he did it and if Aidan is punished, shouldn't he be too? I understand that the goal can't be taken, a yellow card can't be given, but Dida was fined for his dive. The same should be used here. It seems everyone except Wenger, the ref, and the majority of the Arsenal support thinks he meant it.
The moral?
Diving has no place in football.
*a blatant attempt to take three points from us when we beat them.
tl;dr: I'm fed up of diving and want Eduardo punished.
Things to be done (eventually)
'The Future' and life stuff. 
Apprehensive
Content
Disbelief
Tired
Sunny Mood
Idols 
:
Go spread some dA love 
