on Writhing and Diving (and yes, biting)

It's amazing to watch and observe American attitude toward football (I refuse to call the sport soccer).  I grew up remembering the name "Pele" and his famed 1970 World Cup; how Brazil kept the Rimet Cup permanently (whoever wins the cup three times keeps it) and actually rooting for Germany in 1974 (when everybody else wanted the Netherlands to win).  I just loved Gerd Muller "Der Bomber" and Beckenbauer "Der Kaiser" (very martial nicknames), Berti Vogts, Paul Breitner, Sepp Maier, these guys were awesome.

So it's been pure delight to watch the World Cup after a few decades recess (missions work, grad School, life getting in the way).  The first observation is the incredible tempo with which the players play now.   Players today are much more athletic than before, which results in a higher number of goals.  No-one is complaining there.

So, the main beef people have here in the US about the game is "diving" and "writhing" (ok, and biting too).   The Wall Street Journal even computed how many minutes per game each team spends rolling on the ground in pain: 6 minutes, less than 2 minutes, it varies.  Obviously, the good folks in Midtown Manhattan coming up with these stats have never had aluminium cleats jammed into their ankles.  I still remember all the blue marks we got from one another when we were playing as kids (we had these screwed-in cleats, just like the pros today; now kids are spared with these fake soft cleats).  The game is tough and, yes, painful.  And when the players actually fake it, it's their way to break the tempo,  slow the game down, give a chance to catch their breadth, creating "time outs." Same with diving.  The players are attempting to induce error on the part of the referee; it's psychological warfare.

Obviously these plays don't quite fit as written notes on the arm of the quarterback and they can't be phoned in from the side-lines.  I know it's been chronicled many times before, but the way football is choreographed is fundamentally different:  strategies are much more fluid and exhibit far less control during the game from the top-down structures of American football coaches (I can never keep up with how many coaches are on the side-lines).  Creativity to generate plays is left to the players after the clock starts and pretty much until it ends.  This means the human dimension of the game is an essential part of it, including referee's mistakes, unfair outcomes, etc.  In the other game of football, nothing seems left to chance or human error (even if it takes some dude 20 minutes to stare at a screen to figure out there was interference).  So, I'll take the short-lived drama (WSJ assures us it's 6 minutes) over the excruciating slow pace at which what is supposed to be a one-hour game can take place. 

The "beautiful game" is one of multi-layered nuances, many of them lost by those who don't know the game.  I suppose the best analogy is baseball with all the rituals surrounding the psychological warfare involving  the pitcher, the hitter, the umpire and the catcher.  If you don't know anything about baseball, you won't catch half of what is really going on. But once you do, it is a beautiful thing.