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The Wall Street Journal of all news sources, recently did a fantastic study about flopping during the World Cup. Look, we all know they do it. It ruins the game and makes it hard for people who aren’t born and raised on this shit to get into it. On top of that it’s blatant cheating. I’ve said it a million times before but the soccer establishment insists that I’m overreacting. Then they call me xenophobic because they don’t have anything else to say.

But it’s undeniable now – soccer players fake injury all the time and they do it in order to gain an advantage. No stopping the clock means that soccer-weenies who roll around on the ground can kill the clocks without any repercussions. Then they arbitrarily add three minutes on at the end of the game no matter what.

So what the WSJ did was they added up all the times there were “injuries” that stopped play, and how much total “writhing time” was lost due to this. There were 302 instances so far of play being stopped because of injury. Considering there were only 32 games in group play, that’s a lot of freaking “injuries”, nearly ten times per game. A grand total of 132 minutes was lost due to this nonsense, while of course the clock ticked away.

Of the 302 “injuries” only nine of those players did not play the rest of the game. That leaves 293 “injuries,” where we will just have to take the player’s word that they were in an excruciating amount of pain but magically felt better thirty seconds later.

Not surprisingly the more “injuries” you had, the more likely it is your team is good. Of the 293 “injuries,” 150 of them occurred during tie games. But only 40 of the 293 were from teams that were LOSING at the time of the injury, whereas 103 of the 293 “injuries” were from teams that were winning the game.

Gee whiz, I wonder why that is? Oh yea, because when you’re winning 1-0 you might as well go down like a ton of bricks and pretend to be hurt. First you roll around on the ground and scream out loud like you got shot. Then they bring out the stretcher and the jaws of life in order to get your ass to safety. Then you walk it off for a minute and go right back in. Just like that you have wasted two or three minutes the other team will never get back. Here’s the breakdown by team:

So wouldn’t you know it? Perhaps the best team in the World Cup so far (Brazil) has had the most “injuries.” Honduras comes in in third, but they suck so why are they on there? Easy. More than half of their World Cup leading 7:40 of writhing time came when they were tied with France in the first half. Because for Honduras a tie would be just as good as a win against France. Might as fucking well roll around on the ground as the seconds tick away so you can celebrate a tie. It just doesn’t get more soccer than that. After France took a lead in the second half the Hondurans miraculously stopped getting “injured.”

Bosnia obviously is new here. Only 24 seconds of writhing time? Bro, do you even flop? Did you Bosnians not get the message? I understand you people in the Balkans are grizzled as shit, but in the World Cup you have to fake injuries or else you end up like Bosnia did – out of the tournament.

Nigeria doesn’t surprise me at all. When you think of Nigeria, what’s the first thing you think of that doesn’t involve a hashtag? Anyone with an email account immediately thinks “internet scam.” Who among us hasn’t been written to by the Prince of Nigeria asking for a donation to restore the monarchy? I don’t wanna stereotype an entire nationality of people, but I’ve yet to meet a Nigerian who hasn’t been actively trying to scam me.

And how the hell is the Netherlands so low? That dooshnozzle “Robben” redefines what it means to be a Euro-weenie. Then again they kind of cruised through group play and were never really challenged.

And what’s up with Portugal? That bearded nudnik who went down holding his face against the USA spent a good amount of time on the ground. Then again they were losing most of the World Cup so it figures they were less incentivized to flop.

A trend that’s impossible not to notice is that the countries from the New World (North and South America) are by far the biggest fakers (6 of the top 7). What’s up with that? Look, I know that Latino culture has been known to be a tad…..theatrical? But it’s no different from the Euro-weenies. They learn from the best after all.

Here’s the biggest problem with diving – you’re out of your mind if you don’t do it. It’s part of the game. Not diving is worse than not hustling. What happens if you get caught diving? A yellow card? Oh no!!! Not a yellow card!!! Hurts my eyes!! So when Robben went down in the penalty box against Mexico and they got a penalty shot for that, what was the risk/reward there? If he gets caught an official comes up to him and puts a plastic card five feet from his face. If he doesn’t they get a penalty kick which is 90% guaranteed to go in and win the game. How does that make any sense at all?

So as I’ve said before the World Cup has made me appreciate soccer more. It’s a good game and it has potential. There’s just some obvious things it needs to fix, and that’s OK. You’re not a xenophobe if you say that. Anyone who defends diving as part of any game is a professional dooshnozzle who should be getting swirly’s from the O’Doyle family.

Feel free to share your thoughts to keep the conversation going.

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