The Ultimate (Worst) Dive

There has been criticism in hockey and basketball for players taking dives in order to draw penalties or fouls, but the amount of scrutiny is not nearly as much as soccer players have experienced. Whatever respect they have lost from American fans who deride them for their shameless diving, Morten Gamst Pedersen of the English Premier League’s Blackburn Rovers did them no favors in trying to regain it with this play. In this age of digital TV and extreme slow motion, any play can be dissected down to the minute details. There aren’t many details of which to take note in this video- which features Pedersen performing the ultimate dive- except that the defender makes literally zero contact with him. You can see that Pedersen saw that he had no shot, and at the same time a defender was hot on his heels, so he decided to do a little slip-n-slide. Not only was no contact made, but the defender wasn’t even within two feet of him when he threw himself to the ground. The analysts pretty much agree it’s the worst dive they’ve ever seen. Even worse, Pedersen is actually denying having even dove! And oh yeah, Pedersen’s team got demoralized 4-0 in the Saturday contest against the much better Arsenal.