Zero tolerance on diving won't get off the ground

I would have been about seven years old when the formative years of my competitive football education began. I was playing in the local leagues around Manchester, playing against lads from tough areas who had been taught they had to fight for everything.

In that culture, in the north of England, it was drummed into us not to show anyone we were hurt. Dads and coaches on the touchline would shout at us to get up and play on. The game was about becoming a certain kind of man who did not show pain or cry when he was tackled.

And in those days I would never have dreamt of diving or going to ground when I was challenged. I’d rather get hurt than be labelled soft. Playing at Albert Park in Salford you would probably have had to smash a boy in half to get him to go to ground. Then I went to Manchester United as a schoolboy, where my coaches were Nobby Stiles, Brian Kidd and Eric Harrison. Nobby’s reputation speaks for itself, while Eric had played 500 games for clubs such as Halifax, Hartlepool and Barrow, which tells you all you need to know about him. So that culture of acting tough was further ingrained into us.

But as teenagers we started to travel to European tournaments and play against some of the great clubs: Inter, Barcelona, Ajax. The games would start out normally enough, then you’d make a normal tackle and your opponent would be writhing around on the ground in agony. Sometimes you didn’t even think you had touched him. But the next thing you knew, the Swiss referee would be marching over and giving you a yellow card, saying: ‘No more! No more!’ And you’d be left standing there thinking: ‘Are they taking the ****?’

European education: Manchester United learned much about playing on the continent before their incredible Champions League win in 1999

We had Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt in central midfield but you would have thought they were the Kray twins from the reaction of Italian or Spanish coaches and parents. Whenever they made a challenge, the whole bench and entourage would erupt in fury.

We were all indignant. In your frustration, you would go to pick a lad up who was on the ground and then suddenly he would make out you had hit him. And instead of a yellow card it was a red one. The whole team would be outraged. Cheating, pure and simple. Or so we thought. But Eric, Brian and Nobby would simply say to us: ‘When are you going to learn?’

Quite soon we were all playing for United’s first team in Europe. And that’s when the real education began. Between 1995-1999, when we won our first Champions League, we learned tactical and technical lessons, but we also had an education in other aspects of the game: running the clock down, slowing the game down, tactical fouls and, yes, winning a free-kick. Slowly it dawned on us. This isn’t going to change. This is the way the game is played at a global level. It doesn’t matter what Gary Neville from Bury thinks. This is the game at the top level.

So gradually your thinking changes. You might say your morality weakens. Certainly the value system you grew up with is challenged. And so in Europe, if you were fouled in the first 15 minutes, you would go down, get the physio on, give the team a break. If you felt the hand of a forward pressing down on you at the far post at a corner, you would go down to make sure you got the free-kick. And the forwards if fouled would make sure they went over so the referee noticed it.

It gets into your thinking. So when Robert Pires is running at me, I start thinking: ‘Don’t stick out a leg because, if I do, he’ll find it somehow and fall down. And if that happens, when I get to the dressing room the manager won’t be saying, “Bad luck, Gary. You were stitched up there”. He’ll be calling me naïve, accusing me of making a ridiculous challenge.’

It got to the point where I, as a senior player, would have a go at younger players for trying to battle on when they were fouled in the box. That’s some transformation from the seven-year-old who would have died of shame if he had dived. So when I saw Andy Carroll dive against Newcastle, I just laughed. It was an example of a traditional English centre-forward who has been relatively sheltered from a culture of going to ground easily suddenly trying to be clever and making a complete mess of it.

The fall guy: Andy Carroll's dive against Newcastle

It sparked another debate about diving and PFA chairman Clarke Carlisle raised the prospect of a clampdown, saying there should be zero tolerance with referees cautioning and sending off offenders. I wish it were that simple. There is a complexity to it, which simple statements about clampdowns cannot address.

The game we play in England has changed. It is now influenced by the global game and how it is played. Only around 35 per cent of players starting this weekend will be English. And just as those Italian parents would get so het up about Nicky Butt, we have to accept that different cultures have different value systems. I would speak to Cristiano Ronaldo about this and he believed that if a full-back was coming in at right angles to him and committed to tackle him, that was more objectionable than a dive. He would jump to save himself from injury and ride the tackle. He had a point. You can call it soft but in a Latin culture that kind of tackle is seen as the disgrace, not the dive.

It’s not just Latin players. Gareth Bale, one of the most exciting players in the League, said recently: ‘If people want to say I’m diving then they can but I’m trying to get out of the way. You have people flying in at you and if you stand there, you’re going to get a whack.’

Going to ground: Gareth Bale is tackled by Craig Gardner in the 0-0 draw at Sunderland

The culture has changed for ever. I reckon 75 per cent of fouls now committed result in players going to ground. By which I mean they could have stayed on their feet but want to show the referee they have been fouled.

When Dimitar Berbatov pulled Chris Samba’s shirt at Old Trafford earlier in the season, Samba fell to the ground. But you’d need a 20-tonne truck to pull Samba to the ground by his shirt. But Samba is not a cheat — he was the one being fouled. So how do you implement a clampdown on diving in those situations?

Last Sunday, when Swansea’s Neil Taylor drove into Tottenham’s penalty area, William Gallas put his hand on his shoulder momentarily to hold him back. Taylor kept going and didn’t get a penalty. But nowhere in the rules does it say you’re allowed to manhandle someone. It doesn’t say it’s OK if it’s only a brief touch or not very hard. It was a foul.

Saving himself: Ronaldo

At the end of it all I’m in a moral daze because I can see my values have changed so much. And, when I analyse it, I realise over time I’ve come to accept other people’s values. We live in a multi-cultural society far more open to international ideas. If you’d told me 20 years ago I’d drive through Bury and see someone sitting outside a café drinking a latte, I’d have laughed. In fact, I wouldn’t have even known what a latte was.

In the same way our game has changed and the authorities are not going to accommodate English cultural attitudes into their refereeing. I do understand why we get so upset about diving. I’m sad that the innocence of the seven-year-old has been lost. In some ways I like the purity that game represented. But it’s not the game we play any more.

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