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Faking fouls latest problem for soccer
PARIS (AP) -- Tackles from behind may be under control but shirt-pulling and taking a dive to try to draw a foul are on the rise, World Cup officials said today.Referee Ali Mohamed Bujsaim, who took charge of the Brazil-Netherlands semifinal, and Voelker Roth, a member of FIFA's referee committee, both said the problem had grown since a crackdown in the World Cup all but eliminated dangerous tackles.
"They aren't tackling from behind, but now the players are pulling and simulating" fouls, Roth said. "This is a danger to soccer. It's impossible for the referee to see it all."
Bujsaim said he and other referees had succeeded in applying FIFA's crackdown against tackling from behind, one of the most dangerous tactics in soccer. But now, he said, it's the fouls that don't happen that are causing problems.
"We've been studying this problem for a long time, but the players have a lot of tricks," the official from the United Arab Emirates said. "We can ignore it, which is punishment because the ball belongs to the other team, or we can give a yellow (warning) card. We can see if it's a simulation or a real foul."
The players know when they are caught taking a dive, Bujsaim said.
"We'll see a player go down like he's dying," the referee said. "We go up to him and say, 'Get up! You're OK,' and they get right up."
As long as soccer has been played, some players have taken dives to try to draw a foul. But the art of the air tackle has reached new heights in France this summer.
And the issue has moved to centre stage as the final between Brazil and France nears on Sunday. France will play without defender Laurent Blanc, suspended for shoving the face of Croatia's Slaven Bilic in Wednesday's semifinal. Contact appeared to be made but perhaps not to the extent Bilic indicated as he clutched his chest, eyes and throat in full view of referee Jose-Manuel Garcia.
Shirt-grabbing -- FIFA president Sepp Blatter this week called it "textile testing" -- also was in the spotlight on one hotly debated penalty that helped give Norway a first-round victory over Brazil. TV replays showed the call, blocked from general view, was correct.
In an hour-long news conference, a rare opportunity to question a World Cup referee about his job, Bujsaim said officials are human with human limits and want to bring out the best in soccer.
"It's a very fast game and we might make mistakes. There might be one mistake that lasts 100 years," he said. "But we want to allow the players to show their talents."
Bujsaim and Roth, who co-ordinates officials in Germany's Bundesliga, said there had been no pressure from Blatter's call early in the Cup to crack down on dangerous tackles, and that a subsequent flood of ejections was coincidental.
But Roth singled out one of those games, in which two players from Denmark and one from South Africa were ejected, as being poorly officiated by John Jeiro Toro Rendon of Colombia. Roth added that the red cards were properly handed out.
NEXT ROUNDS: Round of 16 || Quarter-finals || Semi-finals
GROUP A: Brazil, Morocco, Norway, Scotland
GROUP B: Austria, Cameroon, Chile, Italy
GROUP C: Denmark, France, Saudi Arabia, South Africa
GROUP D: Bulgaria, Nigeria, Paraguay, Spain
GROUP E: Belgium, Holland, Mexico, South Korea
GROUP F: Germany, Iran, United States, Yugoslavia
GROUP G: Colombia, England, Romania, Tunisia
GROUP H: Argentina, Croatia, Jamaica, Japan