- Sep 2, 2003
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More interesting, perhaps, is the way in which our commentators and pundits, as well as supporters, are influenced by a language of intention and excuse when it isn't relevant to the Laws. Related to this is a personal bugbear, the way in which many are prepared to moralise about particular kinds of player behaviour where 'morality' is irrelevant. The term 'cheat', for example, is flung around with abandon without any understanding of what it actually means.
I've followed your discussion with thesoccershrink with interest.
This issue is also a bugbear for me, but apparently for a different reason. I find that instead of using the term 'cheat', commentators and pundits instead rely on a slew of euphemisms. For example, we often hear of players 'going down too easily' or 'playing for' a free kick when 'cheating' or certainly 'diving' would be more appropriate. In a similar vein, several times in a game we will see players from both teams (including ours) who, after little or no contact, appear to be mortally wounded; such play-acting is rarely commented upon, and certainly never described as cheating.
With 'simulation' now enshrined in the Laws (and the questions of intention and morality thereby catapulted into them) I would far rather hear such behaviour described for what it is than excused - and, by extension, perpetuated - by myriad softer terms.