Diving in the Women’s Game (Soccer)
By While the Americans are preparing for tomorrow morning’s France v USA (and the English are conducting their time-honored post-tournament collapse bickering), the NYT wrote about a paper comparing rates of simulation in both the women’s and men’s games.
The upshot is that simulation is rife in the women’s game, and controversially to some commenters from my post on USA v Brazil, there are regional patterns evident in the data:
The Wake Forest study indicated that female players from South America tended to dive somewhat more often than other women, Rosenbaum said. This was no surprise to American players who say that the Brazilians, in particular, are practiced in the clever art of simulation, perhaps because they grew up immersed in a soccer culture in which it is commonplace.
The authors find 0.78 definite and 4.96 questionable injuries per match in the 2003 and 2007 Women’s World Cup matches in the data. In a different comparison, 13.7% of apparent injuries are “real” in the women’s game, vs. only 7.2% in the men’s. Several explanations are posited as to why the difference exists between the women’s and the men’s game:
1. The greater visibility and money in the men’s game create incentives that justify simulation.
2. That men are simply bigger, faster, stronger etc., leading to more apparent injuries.
3. Supported by Brandi Chastain, the women’s game simply has an integrity that the men’s does not.
Then there’s a fourth, which is the women simply haven’t learned this form of gamesmanship as well as the men.
I reject number three; while it would appear that according to the data, it would seem that the women’s game might have more integrity, but isn’t immune to simulation. Two, maybe, but I’m unconvinced that this explains the disparity in the ratios of actual to apparent injuries. While ultimately it’s undoubtedly a combination of all four explanations, I remain unconvinced about any single explanation. How’s that for fence sitting?
I love that the picture leading off the story is of the infamous Erika and her phantom injury (so phantom there’s wasn’t an American player within a couple yards of her when she toppled over) and I’ll be watching France v USA tomorrow morning at 9 Pacific.
