Hacker News Reader

Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

One possibility would be to use after-the-game replays only to punish particularly egregious behavior, like blatant dives, with suspensions. Wouldn't interrupt the flow of the game, but would deter wrongdoing.

View on HN

it's already being done, but not to punish dives. it's used to analyze more serious situations such as brutal fouls (a player can get additional punishment by football associations after the game, even to a complete season dismiss) or alleged corruption.

dives are stupid and I hate them, but I think they are far overrated in the US (assumption from what I see in internet discussions)

I'll take it you meant "overblown" instead of "overrated". And no, that's not the case. We actually are incredibly offended by it. We see dives as part and parcel of corruption and as a "more serious situation".

I love soccer and I'd love to see more of it in North America. All the diving to the ground and "oooh my ankle" crap makes it look to people here like a sport full of unnecessary drama. If disincentives were added so diving didn't pay, the game's reputation would be much better imho.

On dives, I agree they're seen as a much bigger deal in the US than other places. I think many people not very familiar with soccer/football tend to assume that they're a much more serious offense than seems to be consensus within the sport. Essentially, people assume that they're a form of deliberate cheating, which in many sports is a kind of offense that would earn you a multi-game suspension on the first offense, and long-term bans on subsequent offenses (say, if you were caught using a corked bat in baseball).

It is deliberate cheating. On the other hand f.ex. tactical fouls are common in basketball, and nobody calls it cheating, just a common strategy. It's quite hard to get a technical foul or 5 fouls, so every end of an NBA game is 0:30 on the clock and till the end of the game you have foul after foul on both sides. I loved basket, but this one was really stupid and annoying.

Different sports, different "tactics".

Yes, that's something I think they should do.

The problem is ensuring the game is recorded fairly - they could use the existing cameras certainly but I suspect it's a non-trivial discussion to ensure that the camera coverage is fair for review purposes.

FIFA already does this ... though there's a lot of bias involved.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com