What’s your most embarrassing story? Khadim N’Diaye, goalkeeper for the Senegal national team, has a pretty good one. It involves his right leg, his left leg and a degree of shamelessness that’s enough to make the rest of humanity feel humiliated.
N'Diaye performed an atrocious bit of playacting to shave a few seconds off the clock at the end of Senegal’s match versus Algeria at the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations.
Manchester City’s 5-0 demolition of West Ham at the London Stadium was a crushing experience for Hammers fans. The loudest cheer of the night was reserved for an appearance from high school student Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man.
Spider-Man was felled in the penalty area, his tackler immediately pointing to the spot in a display of sportsmanship that’s rarely seen. But was it really a penalty, or did Spidey take a dive?
In the sport of soccer, there isn’t anything worse than a diver, a flopper or a simulator, whichever derogatory term you prefer. Any half-decent spectator is appalled by the sight of these adults rolling around and screaming in agony when nobody even touched them.
It's one of the worst sins you can commit and thoroughly deserving of a yellow card. These eight gentlemen in particular would do particularly well on the diving board at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Research from Wake Forest University in 2011 showed that female soccer players are half as likely as men to flop and fake an injury during a match, and this video featuring Barcelona’s Barbara Latorre demonstrates just that.
Two years ago, Brazilian midfielder Anderson was at the end of his Manchester United career after being frozen out under manager Louis van Gaal. Oddly, Anderson had managed to stay on the Old Trafford books for over seven seasons without ever particularly impressing. He’s a four-time Premier League champion and winner of the 2007-08 UEFA Champions League with United, but he’s still widely regarded as a flop having arrived from Porto for €30 million in 2007.
One of the major developments in the world of football over the past week has been the deployment of the “green card” in Italy’s Serie B to reward players for acts of virtue, including admitting to having taken a dive in order to win a penalty or free kick.
Diving in soccer certainly predates the 1974 FIFA World Cup final, but on no other occasion has the ramifications of a flop been so clearly encapsulated and amplified.
The 1974 World Cup in West Germany served as a pageant for the Netherlands technique of Total Football, the tactical theory envisioning a side in which any outfield player can quickly take over the role of any other player on the pitch.
Dear Floppers,
Look, we get why you do it. You want a call and sometimes (especially in the penalty area), flopping and hoping for the call is a higher-percentage play than trying to get a shot.
This message, we should note, is not directed at any single flopper, though some of you out there in soccerland might want to pay more attention than others (cough, Luis Suarez and Arjen Robben, cough).
You don't look cool when you flop. You look the opposite of cool, like a small child throwing a tantrum in a grocery store.