Dark arts
how cheating in professional football is condoned and encouraged
Footballers fall over a lot. Things that won’t make ordinary people fall over make footballers fall over - a tug of the shirt, a light kick or push, any contact at all if they enter the ice rink marked out by the white lines of the opponents’ penalty area. Footballers also experience pain more acutely than normal people, screaming in agony when an opposing player has nearly kicked them - psychological damage sustained because of the proximity of the physical threat. Happily, their recovery powers are greater than those of normal people - what appears to be a life-changing injury can be overcome after a few seconds of painful hobbling before the cameras pan away. Psychology clearly plays a major role - for example players whose team is losing are much more resilient to injury than those who are winning.
The professional football referee is uniquely challenged among arbiters of professional sports - in no other sport do the players spend so much time trying to deceive him. He is more like a Year 9 geography teacher or a prison warder. He cannot trust the players an inch, even with something as inconsequential as whose throw-in it is. A very long time ago, before I was born, he might have relied on the players to tell him. When I was young the player who touched it last might have appealed with half-hearted dishonesty. As I got a bit older he may have appealed with a vehemence which did not ring true. Now both sides appeal with convincing certainty - I particularly like the defenders who clap and point calmly to where the goal kick is to be taken after knocking it out for a corner.
Unfortunately, in England at least, non-adherence to certain rules of the game attracts admiration rather than opprobrium. Nasty, weaselly terms proliferate such as “game management”, “dark arts”, “shithousery”, “professionalism” and “clever play”. Players are praised for deliberately committing fouls to stop a potentially dangerous attack in its early stages. If the player committing the foul gets a yellow card then he is a semi-heroic figure, “taking a card for the team”. Or a defending player under pressure can pretend to be fouled - “buys the foul, clever play” says the pundit, approvingly. Taking too long over each restart, committing petty fouls to disrupt the rhythm of the other team or exaggerating the effect of any fouls suffered - this is all sensible “game management”.
“Shithousery” is a relatively modern term, which means foul play designed to infuriate the other team, usually with some element of fakery or play-acting involved. Shithouses are generally viewed benevolently by their supporters and the football pundit community. Here is a perfect example by two prime exponents of the “art”, Maupay and Martinez, and which also serves as a good indication of how it is currently regarded.
Shithousery does not include dangerously violent play, which is deprecated, and in England absolutely does not include the most egregious of all offences, spitting. Every few years a player is caught spitting at another one and ex-players the length of the country queue up to voice their disgust, the usual line being that getting spat at is worse than getting your leg broken.
Diving to win a penalty is a specific form of “clever play”. It was once abhorred and attributed mainly to foreigners coming into the game. In 2012 Aguero complained that English referees were biased against foreign players when awarding fouls and Alex Ferguson commented that “there have been plenty of players diving over the years and you have to say particularly foreign players”. It’s probable that British players historically were less prone to simulation than others, although the game was considerably more brutal in those days. There were probably ex-footballers going around saying that diving was worse than breaking someone’s leg. But we do know that by 1998 Michael Owen was diving to win a penalty against Argentina at the World Cup. Michael puts it like this: "I'd say that 75% of people could stay on their feet for a penalty, and if they get touched and go down it is almost, 'Hey I got touched so it's OK to go down. I have been guilty as well, I played at the 1998 World Cup against Argentina and I was running flat out, got a nudge, went down. Could I have stayed up? Yes, probably."
Did it leave a sour taste in my mouth, or any England supporter’s mouth, when the penalty was awarded? Of course not.
But I was disappointed this week when Bukayo Saka had a chance in the final few seconds to score against Bayern Munich. He just had to knock it round the goalkeeper and slot it into the net, but instead he hung his right leg out to engineer a collision with the goalkeeper, expecting a penalty to result. I am aware that other interpretations are available - “definite pen” said Rio Ferdinand. “How is that not a pen?” said Martin Keown. “Not a pen for me” said Ian Wright. Saka did not receive a pen.
The point is that Saka almost certainly could have avoided a collision with the goalkeeper, but with other defenders converging he may not have scored. In that split second he calculated that his best course of action was to collide with the keeper, try and make it look like the goalkeeper had fouled him, and hope to score from the resulting penalty. The football fraternity on the whole do not blame him for that choice.
Of course I would have been delighted if the penalty was awarded but I did think “serves you right” when it wasn’t and I saw the replay, and though I have an unhealthy admiration for Saka I did find what he did rather depressing.
I don’t blame footballers themselves. Rare outbreaks of honesty are greeted with horror by team-mates and managers. In 1997 Robbie Fowler won a UEFA Fair Play award for trying to persuade the referee not to award a penalty after he was seemingly brought down by goalkeeper David Seaman in the box. Predictably, his manager was furious with him for it and the referee insisted on awarding the penalty anyway. Fowler took it, Seaman saved it but Liverpool scored the rebound (Fowler was trying to score he has since made clear).
In 2000 Paolo Di Canio caught a ball instead of trying to score when the opposing goalkeeper was injured. He commented afterwards “I walked down the tunnel at the end of the match and all the Everton players they became my friends... my team-mates in an instant were my enemy. They wanted to fight me!" "English football is about fair play" he added, sweetly and mistakenly. His was the last instance of sporting behaviour I have been able to find occurring in English professional football.
But it could be worse. Porto gave me a glimpse of an even darker future when they played Arsenal in the Champions League a few weeks ago, collapsing under any contact, encouraged by a Pavlov’s dog referee who obligingly brought the whistle to his lips at the sight of any Porto player falling to the ground. After one Arsenal corner no fewer than five Porto players were on the ground simultaneously. It was a miserable, cynical spectacle.
I fear it’s going to get worse before it gets better, primarily because deception and well, cheating, is so indulged by the footballing world. You are more likely to win by doing it and there’s a laughable amount of money involved. Everyone is searching for small advantages on or around the edges of the laws of the game.
The sinister spectacled presence of Sir Dave Brailsford at Man United matches does not bode well. Brailsford transformed British cycling through his strategy of “aggregation of small gains,” searching for tiny margins of improvement everywhere. Some of these things were legal, e.g. redesigning bike seats, rubbing alcohol on the tyres for a better grip and getting riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature. As American writer James Clear writes, they hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold. They determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider. They even painted the inside of the team truck white, which helped them spot little bits of dust that would normally slip by unnoticed but could degrade the performance of the finely tuned bikes. Some of the things they did were more controversial e.g injecting Wiggins with triamcilone before his triumphant grand tours.
Right now Manchester United are comically inept - an aggregation of small goons - it must be torturous for Brailsford to sit through their lazy, hapless displays. One wonders how much Brailsford will improve them by putting Maguire in heated shorts and finding a giant pillow to fit his oversized head, but one suspects he is already creating a fast-growing dark arts department that promises to be much more effective.
In some ways, football has improved. The game is less violent and corrupt than previously. FIFA remains a paragon of propriety with its painstakingly objective selection of world cup host countries. But individual games appear to be contested fairly. Violent conduct is more harshly punished than before, so that great players like Messi and Mbappe can flourish in big tournaments and are not kicked out of games as happened to Pele in the 1966 World Cup. We no longer see games like Italy v Chile in 1962, the battle of santiago, brilliantly described in this clip by David Coleman as the “most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football possibly in the history of the game”.
So we need to keep things in context. But deceiving referees is an increasingly important part of the game, and very few people in the game seem to mind. I fear it’s only going to get worse. We ain’t seen nothing yet.
If you have comments on this article, especially practical ways we can improve things, then please feel free to pipe up below. All non-libellous and not unduly offensive contributions welcome