World Cup, cry baby athletes, and poor sportsmanship

[Alex]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I suppose I see intentionally trying to deceive an official who is all by himself as kind of, well, cheating and unsportsmanlike. But if that's part of soccer, then it's part of soccer.

At least when I was playing it wasn't so much deceiving the official as much as making sure they could see what was going on. That is, an illegal tackle is an illegal tackle whether you fall down or not but the ref is much more likely to call if if you fall down.

Of course, the incentive to not start falling to the ground every time another player was near is that eventually they'd start giving you reason to hit the ground.