Spurs’ Gareth Bale teaches Liverpool’s dumb foreigner Luis Suarez the Great British dive
WHEN Tottenham Hotspur’s star Gareth Bale earned a yellow card for a dive against Inter Milan, he protested his innocence. He is no Luis Suarez. The Liverpool striker admitted that he had dived to win a penalty at Stoke.
The dye was cast. Luis Suarez is a cheat. He’s such a massive cheat that the Sun called him “Armstrong MKII”. Not in reference to gravity-defying Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, rather Lance Armstrong, that cheat of cheats.
Both Bale and Saurez cheat when they dive. But only one of them is vilified in the British press. Is it the swarthy Uruguayan? Or is it the Welsh lad? Take a guess.
The likeable Welsh lad’s yellow cards against Inter was his sixth yellow card for diving in the past 15 months. This season he has four, so far.
Suarez has three in total. He has one this season. (Although he wasn’t booked for the dive against Stoke.)
In season 2011/12, Suarez earned one yellow card for diving. Bale got two. Other Premier League players who got one yellow for diving season include: Andy Carroll, Grant Holt, Samir Carruthers, Simon Cox and Darren Pratley. But Suarez became a bigger cheat than any of them.
And his manager is not that displeased that Bale cheats. Andre Villas-Boas, who shares the same initial as Bale’s newborn daughter, says the yellow awarded against Inter is good:
“He was at risk of being suspended if he received another yellow card. We now have him clean of problems for the last eight if we go through. To be fair, probably with this result, we would have asked for him to get a yellow card to get clean and be ready for the last eight.”
Cheating is fine when you’re Bale. Never mind just playing the game. Cheating is good.
If you want to find inconsistency, look at Gary Neville. He wrote:
And as I’ve watched the debate on Luis Suarez gather momentum, I detect a rush to judge a footballer, to castigate him without any thought to how different his life experiences are. Though Suarez is 25, he has been in England for only two years. He’s still adjusting. This is a kid who grew up playing football on the streets in Uruguay, who has experiences and a background completely different from anyone reading this newspaper.
Suarez dives because he has not adjusted to the culture. He dives because he’s foreign.
And here’s Neville on Bale’s diving:
“If you are disgusted by Bale diving, go sing in the choir, go play the violin, or play the recorder.”
But don’t go to Uruguay, where virtuoso violin playing is done with a stereo…
Posted: 9th, March 2013 | In: Sports Comments (7) | TrackBack | Permalink
