An Explanation of (not an excuse for) the Fake Injuries in Soccer
Interest in soccer has been on the rise in America for as long as I’ve been conscious of the discourse surrounding fandom. We’re always on the cusp of the next generation that is going to turn us into a force to be reckoned with on the international stage. And yet, expectations rarely rise above making a quarterfinal and even those are rarely even met, regardless of the talent on the team. But this article isn’t a referendum on the USMNT’s performance, but rather an exploration of a consistent gripe that many American’s have with the game of Soccer.
Now you might be wondering why on earth anyone would defend some of the flopping that goes on in soccer. We’ve all seen the clips of the guys going down like they’ve been shot and then rolling around grabbing their head, ankle, knee, or all of the above, all while crying out to the heavens as if wishing it would all just end. Then you watch the replay and see that no even touched them. The answer is, I’m not defending that at all. Since I’m writing this mostly for the casual fan, let me assure you that soccer fans laugh, mock, and deride this stuff as hard as you do. Here’s a compilation. That’s Neymar in the thumbnail image by the way, he’s the poster child for what I’m not sticking up for.
International competitions like the Men’s and Women’s World Cups, or the Euro and Copa America tournaments draw the eyeballs of Americans for a couple of weeks in the dog days of Summer every 2-4 years. There is something about the nationalism, passion, and emotion that goes beyond the grind of domestic club competition that draws people in. For the hardcore fan, that more than makes up for the slightly diminished quality of team play due to the lack of time spent together, and for the casual fan it is the whole point.
But, for people who love the game of soccer, this influx of casual fans, while fun, comes with a steady, and eventually exhausting stream of comments.
“I’ve tried to get into soccer, but I can’t stand the flopping.”
“These guys are so soft, they wouldn’t last a second in X sport.”
“Oh get up!”
Frankly, it’s a pretty fair reaction. If you’re an American and you’re used to watching Football or Hockey, some of the behavior on a Soccer field has to look pretty silly. The contact levels in those sports go beyond what happens in Soccer in both frequency and severity, but those players would be ridiculed into oblivion if they ever rolled around literally faking tears like Neymar. That person would never be accepted as the one of the best, regardless of their skill. I’m not here to defend the Neymars of the world, in fact I find those displays displays shameful and embarrassing. When a new fan complains about that, I have no choice but to agree.
What I’m here to do today is to explain a different flavor of the “fake injury” that casual soccer fans frequently point out and try to re-contextualize what is actually going on. This is where there’s a collision and maybe it didn’t look that bad, but the player stays down for a while before getting back up to play.
“See, he acted all hurt and now he’s fine.” (another classic)
My goal here is to help people understand how a sport like soccer can be popular in the same countries as a sport like rugby, which has all the contact of American football with all the protection of a couple trying to get pregnant.
The number one thing you have to understand about the rules of professional soccer is that if you get subbed out, you are done. Baseball is the only other popular sport in America functions this way, and no one ever really gets hurt in baseball unless they run into a wall like a lunatic, get hit in the hand by a 100 mph fastball, or throw so many 100 mph fastballs that their elbow disintegrates. Baseball’s kind of an insane sport. But that’s not the point. The point is, if you tweak your ankle in basketball, baseball, football, hockey, etc… you can leave the court, go back to the locker room to get checked out, taped up, and come back once you know you’re good enough.
If that happens in soccer, your choices are:
1. Leave the game for good
2. Step out, leave your team a man down while you get fixed up
3. Quickly have team doctors assess your condition while the ref is yelling at you to either get back up or leave
4. Just stay down for a minute to stretch out and assess the situation for yourself
Typically, the players will go for option 4 if at all possible, 3 if unsure, and 2 or 1 only when absolutely necessary. This leads to stoppage sin the game with the camera trained on them until they’re good to go. Any other sport, it’s a commercial break, and/or the player gets to leave and come back when they’re ready. This allows the minor nicks and bumps going relatively unnoticed, rather than spotlighted like they are in Soccer.
Now you might be thinking that’s all well and good, but still, the contact levels we’re dealing with here don’t warrant the time spent laying on the ground holding the legs, knees, and heads. While I agree that it doesn’t rival sports like Hockey, American Football, or, god forbid, Rugby, I will challenge my readers to re-consider that notion. Here are the things that happen in soccer:
Full speed collisions of some of the fastest athletes in the world
Collisions of various bony body parts (head to head, knee to knee, ankle to ankle, etc…)
Sliding spikes clobbering ankles at high speeds
Just getting tripped running full speed (when’s the last time you actually tried this?)
Again, I’m not asking you to forgive the guy who dives at the slightest contact and acts like he’s going to die, but maybe cut the guys who crashed into each other at 20 miles an hour some slack while they lay on the ground for 30 seconds.
Alright, reason number three this flopping happens - sometimes these guys just need a breather for a minute. Call it soft, call it boring, but Soccer games are a minimum of 90 minutes and almost always closer to 100, with just a 15 minute halftime. And remember, you can’t get subbed out and come back in! So for most of the game, you’re either jogging around to keep the team’s shape intact, and when the ball comes your way you’re either in full blown fast twitch mode or taking off at a sprint. Soccer players are well known for being some of the fittest people in the world, but even they need to take full advantage of a stoppage from time to time.
Football and hockey games are 60 minutes with plenty of commercial breaks and substitutions, basketball games are 48 minutes with the same luxuries, and baseball games are… baseball games. Again, I’m not asking you to excuse all the dramatics, or knocking any of the other sports we all love. I’m just asking you not to begrudge the players when they milk the rules for a quick water break that you don’t have to spend watching an Arby’s commercial.
The fourth, and final reason for all the flopping in my opinion is simple. It’s just gamesmanship. This is probably pretty obvious to everyone, but there are a few nuances to the rules of soccer that inherently encourage some of this behavior. The obvious one is that, while there are rules on the books that are supposed to punish flopping with a yellow card, they are only enforced in the most egregious of cases where a player was completely untouched and tries to trick the refs into calling a foul. No ref wants to accidentally walk over to a player who’s actually hurt and wrongly give them a yellow card that can result in expulsion and/or suspension later down the road. It’s just a grey area that’s very difficult to enforce, and basketball has the exact same problem.
There’s also the game time rules. No other sport has a clock that runs continuously regardless of whether the game is stopped or not. Even weirder, the refs at the end of the game get to add however much time they feel like was lost to stoppage. And the cherry on top is that even after the ref has added that time, they can let the game go past it, entirely up to their discretion. One thing to understand is that refs very rarely add more than five minutes, even if there was a lot more stoppage than that. They’re also loathe to let the game go much longer than a minute beyond the amount they added. This means that as the game comes down to the wire, if one team has a lead, it’s in their interest to waste time. So if they get a goal kick or a throw-in, they’ll take their sweet time figuring out what to do. If they have a substitution left, they’ll use it and sub off the guy furthest from the bench who will walk slowly across the field. And if they get kicked in the ankle, you better believe they’re gonna take as much time to feel better as they can get away with.
If you’re rooting for the team that’s down it can be incredibly frustrating, and if you’re rooting for the team that’s up and have any self-awareness, you’ll just give a sheepish shrug and acknowledge it as part of the game. Occasionally, it backfires with the trailing team scoring a deciding goal and leaving the time wasters no time to respond. Despite the rare, but sweet poetic justice, there’s an argument that it’s a minor flaw in the sport. There is time-wasting in other sports, but since the clocks stop with play, fake injuries aren’t typically as advantageous as they can be in Soccer.
I hope that this helps explain that not all the flopping in Soccer is because these guys are big, spoiled, overly groomed and overly paid babies.
Unless we’re talking about Neymar, then yes, I agree he’s a big, spoiled, overly groomed and overly paid baby.
(feel free to watch the whole video, but fast-forward to 2:46 for the floppiest flop of all-time)