England on the Dive

After the kind of performance England put up against the part-timers of Andorra, it would have been strange indeed if everyone had been talking sense. So there was nothing unusual about a horrified England captain complaining bitterly that “They were cheating, diving and time-wasting.” How inconvenient and very difficult to deal with if all you have to offer is a team of top Premiership players, each of whom is paid an obscene amount of money and none of whom would admit to having personally experienced such tactics before.

To take a case at random, no-one from Chelsea Football Club, for instance, would dream of cheating, diving or time-wasting. Any more than Steven Gerrard would contemplate diving in the hope of earning a penalty – especially against little Andorra.