In the blue corner stands Manchester City's Sergio Agüero who believes overseas players get a rough ride from officials when fouled. In the red corner is the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, who is clear that foreign footballers are the biggest culprits when it comes to diving.

Thespianism on the football field is hardly a new problem and is not confined to the national game. What Fifa calls "simulation" is known across the pond in America's NBA as "flopping" or "acting".

The joke currently running in the multi-billion dollar basketball league is that NBA champions should not receive a winners' ring but an Oscar for their theatrics. This does not come from disgruntled fans or the media but from the top. During the 2012 playoffs David Stern, the NBA commissioner, said: "I think it's time to look at [flopping] in a more serious way because it's only designed to fool the referee. It's not a legitimate play in my judgment. I recognise if there's contact [you] move a little bit, but some of this is acting. We should give out Oscars rather than MVP trophies."

To head off the prospect of LeBron James having to pen an acceptance speech to mark his services to amateur dramatics, the NBA signalled last week there would be heavier penalties in the new season for players who try to fool referees.

During those NBA finals, Stern also said: "If you continue to do this, you may have to suffer some consequences. We just want to put a stake in the ground that says this is not something that we want to be part of our game, without coming down with a sledgehammer but doing it in a minimalist way to begin stamping it out."

According to Tim Frank, an NBA spokesperson, the proposed solution may be a post-game review of a contentious play, rather than officials calling a "flopping" infraction during the contest.

Retrospective action in football currently runs to the rescinding of red cards for a wrongful dismissal or any serious incident missed by officials. There is no statute in the book for simulation, diving or cheating: so if a player cons a referee into awarding a penalty and replays clearly show he was not touched, the offender cannot be sanctioned later. This may be an area for the Football Association and the rest of the sport's stakeholders to address.

Agüero's point was that referees are subconsciously biased against any footballer not from these shores. In Manchester City's 2-1 win at Fulham on Saturday Carlos Tevez and Pablo Zabaleta were each denied penalties when apparently floored in the area.

Asked if foreign players in the Premier League experience more difficulty than their English counterparts in winning decisions, Agüero said: "Yes. Always. But it happens everywhere [in the world]. There is a little bit of privilege with players who come from that country. That is normal. We just play our game, and the referee's job is to know who is tricking him and who is not."

Ferguson's is the opposite stance. He said: "It's not worth going into that subject because down the years there have been plenty of players diving, and you have to say particularly foreign players."

Agüero's view counters this and is simple: referees are more suspicious of overseas players, so they are penalised more for diving. "It can happen. And if it does, it's not good for anyone. Here in England, there are almost as many foreign players as English players and it's not right that some have a privilege that others don't."

The NBA is also tussling with what they view as a misconception regarding official's even-handedness. Mike Bantom, the executive vice-president of referees operations, said recently: "One of the things I'd like to focus on is I think there's a perception out there that kind of throws into question sometimes the competence of our officials and even the integrity of them at times. I want to try and change that."

Liverpool have begun complaining that Luis Suárez is missing out on penalties because of his reputation – rightly or wrongly – for being a diver. In the last three matches, at Sunderland, against United and at Norwich City, the Uruguayan had at least three legitimate penalty shouts turned down.

Whether Ferguson's point about overseas players is correct is moot. In United's 2-0 win over QPR at Old Trafford last season Ashley Young, who is English, invoked the ire of Shaun Derry and his team-mates when the midfielder was sent off by Lee Mason for touching the winger after 14 minutes. Wayne Rooney converted the subsequent penalty.

In the 4-0 win over Aston Villa the following week Young again proved controversial. After seven minutes he appeared to move his left leg to Ciaran Clark's left leg before going down. Mark Halsey pointed to the spot and Rooney again slotted the kick.

Post-match, Ferguson accepted Young was getting a reputation for diving though he was insistent that the penalty decisions were correct. "Yes. In the last week or two, yeah," the Scot said. "I've never seen that in him, it's not a habitual thing in him. He overdid the fall but it's a penalty, there's no doubt about that."

The point made by Brendan Rodgers, the Liverpool manager, is that reputations are difficult to shake. Suárez's previous club were Ajax, where he was also criticised for theatrics.

Bart Vlietstra, a football journalist with NUsport magazine, believes there is less simulation in the Netherlands. "It's not a big issue in Holland. We tend to believe we do not dive a lot, there are not a lot of divers. We call it the schwalbe [swallow] which is a German word, which says it all.

"Its really not accepted in Holland if somebody does it, it's really [greatly] criticised. Suárez, of course, was known for it and he got a lot of criticism. But we tend to believe it's a German or a Latin thing. If a player does do it then it will become noticed. Then it will become noticed and everybody will talk about in on the [TV] programmes and it becomes a real big issue like it was with Suárez a couple of years ago."