Diving in the Premier League has been a hot topic of late. Now West Ham find themselves at the centre of a new controversy.
Diving is one of those topics that gets pundits talking and fans complaining all over. It just seems to rile people up, and to be honest it should. A dive is a deliberate attempt to con the referee in order to benefit your side. It goes against the ethos of football, and West Ham do not want to tie themselves to it at all.
Manuel Lanzini is the player at the centre of this. The Argentine creator ran almost the full length of the pitch with the ball and went down under the challenge of Erik Pieters. However there are two sides to the story when asked if he went down because of the challenge. The incident is in the tweet below.
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The case for Lanzini
So, the case for it not being a dive. Well David Moyes probably does this best, and this is from his post match interview to Match of the Day:
"“The defender gave the referee a decision to make. Manuel Lanzini ran about 70 yards so I think he went over with fatigue rather than a dive. I’d be disappointed to give away a penalty like that but sometimes that’s the way it goes."
The argument is effectively, it was soft, but not illegal. And if you look at the replay, there is contact from the defender. Lanzini draws the contact and goes down, albeit a bit theatrically. We see many soft penalties given and Lanzini would simply argue he was anticipating the challenge.
If the FA are going to punish the Argentine, they have to be sure it’s a deliberate attempt to con. It’s not a case of going down easily, otherwise you’ll be handing out bans left right and centre in the Premier League.
The case for the dive
In opposition to Manuel Lanzini is a simple case: The Argentine was going down before the challenge from Pieters came in. That, in the simple sense, is the definition of the dive. Pieters may have given the referee a decision to make by coming across, but none of his contact was definitive. None of it was what brought Lanzini down.
Also look at where Lanzini was when the challenge came in. Where was he going? Nowhere significant and that’s possibly why he took the tumble, because it was the only thing he could do.
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Overall I think the truth sits somewhere in the middle, but Lanzini is likely to be suspended. The FA have made stamping out diving a big issue, and this is the sort that they will target. The obvious ones aside, they want these ‘going down easily’ to be stamped out. And maybe Lanzini being banned for a few games is a price worth paying to stamp it out.