The Fan

Sympathy for the devil

The Editor — Mon, December 4th 2006

Portuguese star not guilty of diving shock

Christiano Ronaldo penalty winning tumble in the Middlesborough box provoked the usual allegations of the Portuguese player’s inclination to dive. Maybe, this time, we should forgive him. Just this time, mind…

That there was no contact there can be no argument. But neither can there be any argument that Schwarzer’s challenge was reckless and would have taken Ronaldo out if he had not jumped to avoid it. Anywhere else on the pitch it would have been foul - contact or not - and if a defender or midfielder had slid in at that pace and that late he could quite possible have been looking at a red card.

Ronaldo does himself no favours. A blatant dive later in the game leads to the situation where there is little sympathy with the player being tagged a cheat, but on this occasion he did little to deserve that label being reinforced.

Interestingly on the same day another gifted foreign player did cheat to win a penalty but with very little reaction. Arsenal’s Van Persie clearly pulled the ball into his path with his hand before being felled in the box, but combined with the fact that Arsenal were already 2-nil up and the juicier tabloid fodder of Henry’s bust-up with manager Wenger, the Dutchman’s antics barely got a mention.

Listed in: Teams, Arsenal, Man Utd

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