2 Sept 2009

FOOTBALL CHEATS: No 10 - 'Fans' who condone and encourage cheating

Footballers who cheat are undoubtedly a blight on the modern game, but fans who accept and encourage cheating are possibly even worse. And yes, such fans do exist, as the following examples prove.

I am a Liverpool fan, but in my experience, Liverpool fans can be massive hypocrites when it comes to diving. How fans react to Steven Gerrard is a prime example of this - despite the fact he has undoubtedly dived in the past, fans are ready and willing to overlook this because of their misguided worship of the player.

Just take a look at a sample of what so-called ‘fans’ think, with these extracts from a thread on Six Crazy Minutes (after Gerrard was booked for diving against Chelsea):

Fom Ambercabs:

“He does it a bit but fairly selectively, and usually gets us a decison. Cant say I condone it but if we get an advantage from it cant say I get too pissed off!”

From Keniget:

“Maybe it's hypocritical to defend it in that manner, but fuck it, I don't really care anyways. As has been said, he doesn't do it that much and he often gets the decisions”.

From Rafa4PM:

“Fuck it, Everyones been doing it for years now right from the GK's through to the strikers and it seems that its part of the game for good”.

From SummerOfOnions:

“He should stop, but ah well”.

From Ryan:

“Dive all you want Stevie”.

Liverpool fan forums across the net are awash with this kind of cretinous drivel. And if you want another example of what 'real' fans think about diving, take a look at this video clip, where fans on the Kop actually encourage Gerrard to dive.

At one point, you can clearly here someone say 'You should have dived there Stevie and won a penalty':



This is, unfortunately, the depressing reality, not just of Liverpool fans but of many fans in general: They are happy to accept diving and cheating if it gives their team some kind of advantage.

Words cannot describe how much such an attitude sickens me.

People who think like this are not - in my view - true fans – they are clearly weak-minded simpletons who don’t have the courage to be objective and tell it like it is.

Responsible fans should be criticising players who cheat, not lionising them, even if they play for the team they support. But that’s not the done thing – apparently, it’s more important to put overpaid primadonnas on pedestals, worship them like gods and ignore their indiscretions, even if their behaviour is damaging the integrity of football.

Many fans and pundits just do not have the balls to tell it like it is, lest they be castigated by rabid 'superfans' for not being 'real supporters'. Winning is clearly more important than playing the game with honesty and integrity.

There's nothing noble about defending a player when they've done something obviously wrong. Refusing to be objective because of bias and personal preference is just weak, and does not make someone a better fan.

Anyone who deliberately dives in football is cheat. End of story. There is never any excuse for it, and the diving epidemic is just indicative of the corrupt, self-serving nature of the modern game.

Anyone who accepts diving and makes excuses for it is the lowest form of ‘fan’ out there, and it is precisely this type of pathetic, weak-minded ‘fan’ that football does not need.


4 comments:

  1. Utopian thought though huh? If we could get people to behave logically there would be no wars or religion and women would be ruling the planet!
    I agree with you completely, there is no place for that kind of "support". But honestly how many out there are men enough to look at it objectively and say "yeah, this is wrong, some one needs to tell him"?.
    The kind of fans who condone these things are slower than apes, they want to get drunk, absuse a few people, see a couple of crunching tackles and hopefully get a punch up before they go home!

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  2. "<span style=" color: #333333;">Winning is clearly more important than playing the game with <span style="font-weight: bold;">honesty and integrity.<span style="color: #000000; font-weight: normal;">"</span></span></span>

    Of course it is. Why do you think Real fans are happy that their Perezident has taken out huge loans that no bank can realistically pressure him to pay up on any time soon, buys mercenaries, ignores the idea of actually taking a few years to piece together a winning team of youth recruits and foreign talent, and destroys any respect the rest of the footballing world had for the club? The fans don't care about anything except seeing their team win, and win this season. Football fans live very much in the present, so watching one player on their team dive doesn't seem like a big deal because nobody thinks about how that dive is going to affect the game next week, next season, and over the next decade. It's all about winning today. 

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  3. I can recall one situation where one of our new signings, I think it was Luis Garcia, dived in one match and Gerrard himself publicly stated that he told the player that it was not the Liverpool way to dive. Now, that is a prime example of hypocrisies.

    Those fans who even encourage our own players to dive are probably those who come on this site and tell folks like you, who kept their ability to  look at things from a different, more critical point of view, that this is not the way to support our club. It too sickens me.

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  4. You do have to wonder if Jaimie Kanwar is a liverpool fan?

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