Adriano Banned, World Chortles With Glee
By: Martha | April 20th, 2007
The list of suspended players for this weekend’s fixtures just came out and, in addition to the expected names of people with too many cards (one of whom, to my great dismay, is Mr. Luis Figo), there’s one surprise: Adriano. Despite not picking up a single card in last weekend’s humiliating loss to Roma, he’s been banned for two games — for diving.
My response when I read this story was as follows: “Ha! Hhaaahaha!” (And that’s coming from an Inter fan — I can’t imagine what the rest of you are feeling right now.) The penalty the Brazilian won against Roma was laughable, and there’s a certain justice to the fact that he’s being punished in retrospect for the egregious dive. Inter, needless to say, are shocked — SHOCKED! — at the decision, and plan to appeal the “shameful” ban.
The video-based punishment is certainly a step in the right direction, but it probably won’t to much to deter such behavior until goals scored from falsely won penalties are taken away. And, since that seems pretty much impossible for about a million reasons (Teams can argue, for example, that the goals affected subsequent subbing patterns and tactics so you can’t just take them away and act as if the rest of the game would have been exactly the same. Or, what if the dive takes place away from the box, and a goal came off the subsequent free kick but only after four or five passes, and a defensive error — do you take that one away? Where is the line drawn?), these punitive measures might be all we ever get.
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