Diving does pay

In my humble opinion the governing bodies of football have done very very little to tackle cheating and indiscipline in the game of football. This has been yet again demonstrated this weekend as Luka Modric 'won' Tottenham a penalty with a blatant dive against Stoke City.

Modric cheated Spurs a goal and what would the punishment have been if he had been caught? Just a yellow card. There is not enough disincentive to cheating in the game, so players will continue to go down after no contact or the slightest of touches in order to gain an advantage for their team.

It would be very easy to clamp down on diving and make it a real rarity. Simply retrospectively ban anyone caught diving in the penalty box for three matches, this would soon result in players thinking twice about diving in the box.

Sadly the media are also partly to blame in all this. Dorrans of West Brom was quite rightly booked by Mike Dean yesterday for a blatant dive against Wigan. Roberto Martinez fairly pointed this out afterwards. However the moronic Shearer and Hansen stated on MOTD that there was enough contact to have gone down, they were condoning cheating. The media have largely done the same thing with Modric today.

Cheating has become an acceptable part of the game in this country and this is rather sad. It would be so easy for the authorities to stamp it out but they don't' seem to care for fairness or progress. The corrupt and inadequate malignant process known as FIFA doesn't want fairness in football, FIFA continues to ignore any chance to bring technology and retrospective punishment into the game.

I don't want the Premiership to become as bad as the likes of the Spanish league, watching the Real Madrid-Barca game last night emphasised just how bad this cheating and gamesmanship can become if it is allowed to blossom unchecked. There was routine diving, routine feigning of injury, routine rolling around on the floor after minimal contact and no sportsmanship whatsoever. This is not where football should be going.