One thing that drives me nuts about soccer — I mean other than the fact that I find it incredibly boring to watch (and, to put that in perspective, this is coming from someone who loves to watch baseball) — is when players fake being tripped (“flopping”) in order to try to draw a penalty call.
I didn’t watch any of the World Cup, so anything I did see was purely accidental. But I did seem to see too many highlights of “tripping” which seemed to nearly cripple a player, only to see him up and running again in a matter of minutes (if not seconds). So I enjoyed Dave Eggers’ piece about soccer in America, which included a pretty funny commentary about flopping:
The True Story of American Soccer
But flopping in soccer is a problem. Flopping is essentially a combination of acting, lying, begging, and cheating, and these four behaviors make for an unappealing mix. The sheer theatricality of flopping is distasteful, as is the slow-motion way the chicanery unfolds…
[O]ur flopper will still be on the ground, holding his shin, his head thrown back in mock-agony… Once the referees have decided either to issue a penalty or not to our Fakey McChumpland, he will jump up, suddenly and spectacularly uninjured — excelsior! — and will kick the ball over to his teammate and move on.