Week after week, Salut! Sunderland asks the same question of a fan of the next team we’re about to play.
It runs like this:
The Eduardo question: last game of the season and you need three points for the title or to win the Champions League final/win the title/stay up. In the last second, your man goes down in the box and everyone in the ground except the ref knows he dived. You get the penalty and win. You take it gladly, you take it guiltily or you’re so ashamed you almost wish you hadn’t won?
The responses are mixed. Some will will take it gladly – “after all those terrible decisions against us” – and some will take it guiltily. Not many would settle for the high moral ground AND failure.
But as the season develops, does the question need a new name?
Match of the Day tonight showed a new Eduardo. Here was a man given a golden opportunity to launch into the sort of dive he perfected against Celtic. And he didn’t so much as go down as the Bolton keeper challenged.
Fabregas, meanwhile, rightly acclaimed on the programme as a world class player, took two dives, one eyebrow-raising, the other probably no more than opportunistic. No card, no mention on MOTD and, in truth, no contest when Eduardo’s theatrics are recalled.
So whose name needs to appear in the question if we decide to change it? Ngog’s? Drogba’s? A new candidate entirely?
Answers on a postcard, or below.
Colin Randall
rds: both first half, the first half, either side of the goal.
ss93: you;re entitled to hate hate it. We’re entitled to look out for and comment on cases of players who seem to be trying to get unfair advantage (whoever they play for, including Sunderland).
I hate reading stuff like this.
What two dives are you talking about? I can’t recall one.