Good afternoon.
The boy Bale is undoubtedly going through what you might call a rebirth. No longer content with being what he obviously believes to be an admittedly lightening fast one trick pony who owns the left wing, his transition into a more central, Ronaldoesque figure is almost complete.
All we are waiting for is for the fine tuning if you like. The balance between him being an as effective team player and a regular goalscorer. The signs after only 7 games in are generally encouraging.
But then there’s the diving.
There are a number of issues here. The first is that he never used to dive. I never had the privilege of watching Didier Drogba prior to his shift at Second Hand Fridge so for the entirety of the time I watched him play in the Premier League he was a rotten, cheating diver.
The next is that cheats don’t prosper. That may make me sound like some Victorian school teacher but hear me out. When footballers hang up their boots and all they are left with is some money in the bank, some memories and their reputation.
Jimmy Greaves: Prolific barely describes his goalscoring. Reputation? Can be a bit prickly. Gary Lineker: Top notch player. Reputation? Housewife’s choice. Sol Campbell: One of the finest centre backs of the last 20 years. Reputation? Lots of people wouldn’t save him if he was drowning.
Gareth Bale needs to seriously sit down with someone he listens to and watch tapes of him simulating and decide …to stop it. And I think I know what Bale might say if you could get him to speak candidly about the subject.
While there are players like Charlie Adam in circulation and you have referees who fail to see every unlawful attack then it’s only right that you [the victim] do what you can to protect yourself from and try to stamp out these unfair and potentially dangerous challenges.
But this is naive. The reality is that until effective technology comes in the referee will miss things. The game is so fast and athletic now that in the thick of it the odd kick or worse will literally be quicker than the human eye.
Diving isn’t the answer. Is it? For every free kick he dubiously wins a small piece of his credibility is chipped away. Or am I missing something?
Luis Suarez this weekend plumbed new depths to the extent that he actually made a laughing stock of himself. The ‘cry wolf routine’ is so exhausted with Suarez now that an opponent could whip out a baseball bat, thump him over the head with it and most referees would jog past the concussed Uruguayan, waving ‘get up’.
Bale must stop diving.
Just thinking, that if Bale leaves his feet planted on the ground ie: keeps running/stay up, and the keeper follow through on that tackle, Bale would’ve been in serious risk of getting injured…
Guzman is coming in for a fullfledged challenge that he then pulls out of last minute…
He basically dummied Bale and scared the shit out of him.
I’ve seen Bale do 100% real and synical diving before, and I loathe it, but this time I think he was protecting his legs…
Are those playing the protection card seriously saying that Bale should jump out the way (dive) because a tackle might be coming?
Perhaps we could ask the other teams not to tackle Bale because he might get injured.
Time to man up, or risk being labeled, at worst, a cheat, at best, a big girls blouse.
Respectfully, I think this is missing the point. It’s not about perceptions of bravery. Bale has have every right to protect his career. People can’t catch him so they invariably either accidentally or deliberately catch him late, running the risk of catching his standing leg.
He’s had 3 nasty injuries already as a Spurs player because of this.
Owen, Gascoigne, Ronaldo, Lee Sharpe – all players who were never quite the same after injury, so who can blame him?
On the diving to con a ref, that is another issue. It’s not the Spurs way, I don’t want to see it, and he should cut it out immediately.
Two points H. One, Suarez is not being taken seriously when he is fouled now. Don’t want Bale in same situation.
Two,diving does not help one play good football. You have to keep your mind on the game at hand – getting the ball in the back of the net, controlling the ball, making good runs, watching out for defensive needs etc…… That’s a full time job while on the pitch. Nothing should be in your head to take you way from that, diving and other sorts of intentional foul mean that you are not fully concentrating on the job in hand.
BMJ wouldn’t have stood for it AVB shouldn’t either.
Regarding S*l Camp***l, why would anyone want to save him if he was drowning? Would totally defeat the object of throwing him in the river in the first place!
Drowning is too good for him…..
Whilst i agree he is going down too much, i think the incident against villa was less a dive and more him trying to avoid injury.
If you watch i think he sees if the keeper continues he’s going to get his shins hammmered and he takes his leg out of the way in advance of that happening. What actually happens is the the keeper pulls out and Bale goes down looking a plum.
He has always taken the chance to go down but I think this incident was not a cynical dive but more an attempt to protect himself. The Suarez incident was far more cynical.
I think there is a wider issue here. Bale seems to be running scared of getting injured/kicked. The public response to Charlie Adam tackle in pre-season and the way he rolls around after is evidence of his state of mind, that he is worried about being kicked out there. Sadly i think it is holding him back.
He has been injured by tackles a lot for a young player and i think it is on his mind. He knows that he goes through impacts faster than most other players due to his sheer power and pace and he knows that it could result in injury. My guess is consciously trying to avoid injury in certain situations. He runs a very fine line between bursting through a tackle and getting pole axed by a challenge (the muamba tackle against Brum being a case in point which had him out for months).
I hope he’s able to get the monkey off his back because he wont want to be known as a diver or indeed scared.
If he can get the monkey off his back, he could then try to get the one off his face.
Har-de-fuckin’-har.
:lol:
Excellent point. Wenger made a good point about players with injury, probably not the best person to reference on here but nonetheless.
He said of Eduardo, Ramsey, Willshire injuries, that most often the recovery of a player is what they have lost psychologically not physically – and you can never tell how they will come back. Every player is different.
With Eduardo he said the player was in the same physical condition, but a) didn’t believe in himself that he was and b) lost his edge, as always at the back of his mind he would get injured again.
I agree Bale sometimes undermines his own game because of this fear, you can’t blame him, but to reach his potential he needs to get it out of his mind. I think he’s decided that part of that is allowing himself to get his legs off the ground from nasty tackles, and not to care what the pundits on MOTD say.