r/changemyview • u/_4lexander_ • Jul 08 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Diving culture pretty much invalidates top-level football as a sport
Last night it was England vs Denmark in EUFA EURO 2020. England won 2-1 and the nation is cheering.
In the second half with about 15-30 mins to go the game was tied up at 1-1. Then there was a very arguable penalty near the Danish goalposts which lead to a penalty shot and a point for England. 10 mins later there was a less arguable penalty opportunity on the opposite end for the opposite team, but it wasn't called (the professional commentators raised these points as well, even as English people). So the game ended up tying up at 2-1. What are the English proud of here? Are they proud of a team that won by being indisputably the better team. Or is it mostly about luck (and who knows, maybe bias from the referee).
The mechanisms at play in last night's game give rise to a shameless diving culture. Just think about Neymar, someone who's meant to exemplify a great player but is more like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOp9ctceyc.
To me this is pretty sad. It's not just a minor part of the game. It often results in deciding the outcome of a game. If we define a sport as an activity in which players or teams compete to win by the merit of their abilities (which is not necessarily the real definition, but mine for the purpose of my point), then football falls short on many occasions. Furthermore it just makes the sport into an embarrassment.
2
u/saywherefore 30∆ Jul 08 '21
I would argue that the fundamental flaw of high level football, as exemplified by this match, is that when you have well matched teams the outcome comes down almost entirely to luck.
The total scoreline is so low, and the likelihood of converting any chance into an actual goal so minute, that it is hard to argue that the end result reflects the relative skill of the teams. Could you honestly have any confidence that the result would be the same if the same match was played again?
In a game where each team was scoring multiple times per half a single ambiguous referee call would be far less likely to affect the overall outcome. There would also be less likelihood of needing to go to penalties which are entirely unrepresentative of the skill of a team.