It could have seemed like yet another moralizing campaign by the British masters of fair play, perhaps aimed at denigrating Latin football and above all Italian football, known, perhaps more than it actually deserves, for its unsportsmanlike behavior, instead surprisingly in the ranking compiled by the Mirror on 10 most embarrassing simulations in the history of football three Germans and two English appear, as well as international champions such as Rivaldo, Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo.
There is only one to represent Italy Alberto Gilardino, whose blatant dive during Celtic-Milan in 2007 was awarded a score that would make Tania Cagnotto envious: 9.6, which gives the attacker now in Bologna the seventh position in the ranking commanded by the Duisburg coach Norbert Meier who, in 2005, approached by the Cologne player Albert Strait, incredibly pretended to receive a headbutt, collapsing to the ground with an interpretation worthy of the best Giorgio Albertazzi.
Not least Rivaldo's pathetic script: in the match against Turkey at the 2002 World Cup, as well as remedying an at least dubious penalty (but at least there was a hold, probably outside the area), the Brazilian unexpectedly puts his hands to his face after receiving a ball on the thigh from the Turkish number 10. Second place and 9.99 points for his "dive".
The "inexplicable hands to the face" category, more than familiar to those who follow football, is recurrent in the Mirror's top ten: how can we forget, for example the Oscar-winning simulation of Barcelona midfielder Sergio Busquets in the Champions League semi-final loss against Mourinho's Inter in 2010. The nerazzurri were forced to play almost the entire game in 10 because Thiago Motta moved the blaugrana with a very light hand, not new to plays of this type to tell the truth (ask around Madrid for confirmation).
But as said, this time the British didn't just give the usual lecture to the others. The third and fourth place in the dishonorable classification, for episodes that are actually more comical than anything else, go respectively to the then Newcastle defender Steven Taylor, who in a match against Aston Villa, after having committed a clear penalty handball, performed a scene worthy of the film Platoon, pretending to be seriously injured in the leg touched by who knows who (he is alone in front of the door, perhaps from the bullet of a Viet-Cong?); and atreferee Paul Alcock, in Sheffield Wednesday-Arsenal 1998, when just pushed by a furious Paolo Di Canio he collapsed to the ground, to be honest not too much simulating: vote 9.85 from the very strict jury of the tabloid.
Which tabloid, however, does not fail to pack a small revenge against the eternal Argentine rivals, like all South Americans considered across the Channel rather gifted in acting (see now the treatment reserved for the Uruguayan of Liverpool Luis Suarez, constantly targeted by the press and not only for the episodes of racism): the elimination, at the '98 World Cup by the Albiceleste national team, must have done a lot of harm, to such point to be included in the ranking a Diego Simeone who actually took the soccer from Beckham and how, causing the expulsion of the Manchester United star. Nothing to get hurt, however, so much so that the fall of the Cholo was intentional but not so ridiculous either.
However, there is a small "compensation" for Argentina: in tenth position, with a relatively poor score (9.45) because he suffers the foul and it's bad too, there is the German Jurgen Klinsmann, who in that cursed (by the Argentines) final of Italy '90, mowed down by Pedro Monzon, let himself go with a pike twist from the Olympic final of the three-meter springboard.
