FA must enforce retroactive punishment for diving
During Monday nights’ fixture in Manchester between Everton and City, the opportunity for the Football Association to enforce their new retroactive simulation for the first time arose. The new policies were announced this offseason, with the FA now holding the ability to punish players for diving after a match has ended.
The 2017-18 Premier League season is off to a wild start, as was the first Monday Night Football match of the term. Two players were sent off during a fanatic 90 minutes at the Etihad on Monday, when the Toffees came to town and held off the heavy title favorites to a 1-1 draw.
Everton youngster Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Manchester City superstar striker Sergio Aguero were involved in the controversial sending off of Kyle Walker and Morgan Schneiderlin. If you watch the highlights from the tilt, it’s pretty obvious that both incidents were clearly simulation and dramatics.
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However, that’s not enough for the three-person panel to be given the opportunity to issue a retroactive two-match ban for players. The new regulations introduced by the FA this summer require that a player is clearly not contacted by the challenger to be charged with diving.
Calvert-Lewin was clearly touched by Walker, although he did get the ball first. Furthermore, Everton midfielder Schneiderlin clearly made contact with Aguero, but obviously not enough to elicit the type of reaction given to us by the Argentinian.
The Premier League and the FA as a whole are trying to improve the game by removing the ridiculous and time-wasting dramatics commonly performed by players. The reasoning for diving is very logical, as a footballer can potentially draw the official into making a poor decision in favor of his side. Before now, there was no punishment.
The decision by the FA to not punish the players for their clear antics is a bad precedent to set under the new policies. Unfortunately they didn’t have much of a chance to even review the dives because there was clear contact, a caveat that should be carefully examined by the FA for revision.
If the new rules remain as they are, we will only see a fractional reduction in simulation. Regardless of this, the FA needs to enforce the rule much more sternly in the future. Otherwise, there is no progress being made.