The people at the Wall Street Journal have tallied up the time to find out who has been most guilty of rolling around on the ground in Brazil…
The World Cup is the biggest stage of all for a footballer so naturally players and teams are willing to do almost anything to win. If that means conning the referee the general attitude is “so be it.”
Remember the days when it was only the clever and suave continental players who used to dive and fake injury? Yes, well that’s a long time ago and now it’s just part and parcel of the game in every country.
The thing about players and teams who do adopt those tactics is that they might get away with it a few times but thanks to analysis and studies, like this one by the Wall Street Journal, they get found out.
WSJ did extensive analysis of each World Cup team’s first two group games to find out who was diving and exaggerating injury the most, here are their findings…
The biggest surprise for us is that Honduras were the biggest time-wasters, they spent seven minutes and 40 seconds on the ground during the two opening group games. We know they are cynical but we thought they channeled that by kicking lumps out of the opposition.
Brazil were the team that spent the most time on the ground “in pain” as they were on the floor 17 times. Wonder-boy Neymar was down five times but every time he was back on his feet within 15 seconds.
The toughest team was Bosnia and Herzegovina who only had two incidences of players writhing around on the floor, fair play to Dzeko and the boys.
The stretcher had to be used nine times in the opening two round and miraculously five of the players who needed to be carried off were back on the pitch within 90 seconds. Hallelujah.
Hat-tip to Wall Street Journal.
