A Rather Bizarre Marriage

Debate rages on over the penalty awarded to Manchester United against Arsenal on Saturday. Here is my take on it.

Rooney dived. There can be absolutely no doubt about that. In the clip posted below (albeit a clip uploaded by someone with a definite agenda) you'll see that Rooney made absolutely no attempt to run on to his first touch. Speaking of that first touch, just look at it again. He basically smashed the ball into the crowd. To me, this is the touch of a man with no intention of getting on the end of it. In my opinion, this is what was going through Rooney's head:

Just get to the ball before Almunia, and go to ground as soon as it leaves your foot. He'll more than likely make contact with you.

If diving can have different moral grades, then this particular one is certainly not the worst. However, the irony is that Eduardo -- the player whose every touch was booed by extremely forgetful United fans -- performed almost the exact same maneuver as Rooney, who I'm sure won't be subjected to booing by his own fans or those of any other team. I'm not defending Eduardo, any more than I'm attacking Rooney. I'm just making the observation that both players did more or less the same thing: got a foot to the ball before the goalkeeper and went down expecting/wanting contact.

The difference, of course, is that Almunia did make the contact Rooney wanted, whereas Boric didn't comply with Eduardo's wishes.

Was Rooney's a penalty? Yes, but he won it through a well executed dive. Had Manuel Almunia demonstrated Boric's sense of what was going down he would have pulled out as best as possible and Rooney would have been branded a big dirty cheat...or not. Unfortunately for Arsenal, Almunia did the silly thing by doing exactly what Rooney wanted him to do. In a rather bizarre marriage, it was both a dive and a penalty. Is such a thing not oxymoronic? Let the reader decide.

Anyway, here are the two incidents. Judge for yourself whether my assessment is correct or not.