Rooney: "I have never intentionally dived." O'RLY?

Wayne Rooney sat in front of dozens of media people, cameras clacking, microphone bristling, keyboards tapping, and set the record straight regarding the penalty he won against Arsenal last Saturday, saying:

I have never intentionally dived. There have been times when I have tried to stay on my feet and tried to get the shot off rather than going down. I don’t think it is fair for players to dive and cheat the other team.

These things have happened for years and I am sure many big games have been decided by the wrong decisions. You can only bank on the referee making the right decision and giving the right punishment. It is important the game is played honestly.

These remarks were amplified by Sir Alex Ferguson who feels like the two match ban for Eduardo, which Arsenal will appeal in the strongest fashion, is absolutely proper. Fergie stated flatly;

Not one coach is proud of the fact that they have players who simulate to get decisions. Coaches can’t be proud if they have won the game that way. I certainly wouldn’t be.

We all agreed that education is the best way forward, from youth teams through to first team players. We all have a responsibility, particularly the players of today, on how it impacts on young people.

And so it’s settled, Wayne Rooney has never dived because he’s a fair player and he would never cheat to win a game. Moreover, Sir Alex Ferguson would never want to win a game because of a dive and tries to educate his players about the evils of diving. Which raises just one question for me: do they both suffer from cognitive dissonance or is it a case of having over-sized brass balls? I mean, Rooney and Fergie have both publicly apologized for Rooney’s diving, so which is it, is he the kind of guy who needs to apologize for diving, or is he an honest player who just dove that once?

You decide:

Wayne Rooney versus Almunia — watch his left leg, he’s going to ground before he kicks the ball into the Stretford End:

Watch the trailing leg...

Rooney versus Arsenal again. This “penalty” ended Arsenal’s 49 game unbeaten run. How is this different than what Eboue did against United when he anticipated contact from Evra?  Oh wait, it happens in the penalty area and Rooney is awarded a penalty:

Rooney versus Tottenham, here he gets a yellow card for simulation, which proves he’s a diver, right?

This is as close as you are going to get to direct evidence that someone is intentionally trying to deceive the referee into giving a penalty. Given the fact that he felt the contact, then when he had no chance of getting to the ball flopped to the ground seconds after the contact, this, for me, is on the magnitude of Dida’s playacting and Rivaldo grabbing his face. Note that the ref isn’t interested in the dive, note that Fergie appeals for the penalty (they were losing at that point) and then note Rooney’s hotheaded tackle on Christopher Samba after which he is STILL complaining that he deserved a penalty:

Wayne Rooney versus Chelsea. Here he seems to roll around on the ground simulating injury and getting Bosingwa a yellow card, note the lack of contact on the reverse angle:

There are others, I’m sure. I only spent about an hour combing through YouTube to come up with this list. Pretty damning evidence, as far as I’m concerned, and it makes you wonder how they could get up in front of the press and say with a straight face “I have never intentionally dived.”

0 comments

  1. I wonder if I go out to serach for Arsenal divers how many I could find in an hour. There would be too many to count. Rooney is one of the most honest players on the pitch. more often than not he is hit before he goes down. even the first video in slow mo shows him running, got hit and then fell. If you have ever run a single stride in your life you fat f**k you would know the your trailing leg doesn’t lift until all you body weight is over the front, which could look like it is being dragged but had there not been an obstacle the legg would have continued to mov forward you stupid twat.

    1. @kawalan, If we were looking at Manchester Utd divers then my computer would have crashed.
      If you can find one Arsenal Player thats dived more than 5 times il be surprised.

      Gd blog mate aswell

    2. “Rooney is one of the most honest players on the pitch”

      When you say “honesty” do you mean like in the clip where it shows him throwing both feet out from under him in order to try to win a penalty in probably the most Dida-esque moment of his career, or is it the kind of honesty where Bosingwa doesn’t touch him but he falls to the ground and feigns injury, or is it honesty for him to do the exact thing that Eboue did to win a penalty against Arsenal and end the 49 unbeaten run.

      Is that what you mean by honesty?

    3. @kawalan,

      @Kawalan. During a normal running stride does your trailing leg/foot doesn’t scrape the ground causing a divot trail. One of the most honest players on the pitch you say. How do you defend the other videos posted then? Take your blinders off you muppet.

    4. For karawlan.
      For someone as who seems a Man Utd suporter you seem to posses more inteligence than most. Lets assume you find twice as many Arsenal divers in 1 hour. Does that make Rooney an honest player. Open your eyes and be honest . Most if not all will cheat. Not that I agree but dont stick up for a cheat like Rooney when they`re all at it.

    5. @ kawalan

      so i think there are honesty on 2 levels here:
      1. players who don’t dive are honest
      2. players who dive but do not go around trumpeting that they “never dive” are in a certain sense honest as well

      Rooney fails on both counts.
      Arsenal’s worst (by this i mean most comical and embarassing) diver, emmanuel eboue, only fails on one…

  2. wow man, nice work finding these clips….

    The only one I think was a geniune penalty was the one vs Blackburn, but the rest are clear dives.

    But if Dudu gets banned for 2 games then after reviewing these clips Rooney needs to get banned for like 10!

    And if they get a hold of Ronaldo’s he might be to play again on his 50th birthday!

  3. kawalan… interesting that I go to Youtube… type Arsenal dive and the first results are Ronaldo and Rooney diving against Arsenal… then Babel, Alonso, Pedersen and only on the 2nd page can you find a dive by Reyes.

  4. Kawalan you are a moron. Are you trying to say that Rooney wasn’t already going to ground against Almunia? Are you saying that he couldn’t raise his trailing leg b/c of the contact? Idiot.

    No one is saying that Arsenal players haven’t also dived, but for Rooney to claim that he has never dived is an outright lie which utterly belies the honesty you claim he has. Are you saying that the other clips above are not examples of cheating? Imbecile.

  5. great compilation mate. send it to some papers see if they will pick it up. is about time we used our online community to fight the ridiculous bias in the press.

  6. You are a CHEAT and a LIAR Rooney! You did it against Arsenal in 2004 as well! Replays clearly showed Campbell never touched you but you went down like the lying little sack of s**t you are! Aided and abetted by BIAS REFEREEING yet again at Old Trafford. Im surprised Referee Riley wasnt linesman. Perhaps he was Dean’s backup! UR EALLY CHEATING SCUM ROONEY. GOD I HATE YOU

  7. Wow Kawalan, the point was NOT whether Arsenal players have dived in the past, it was Rooney’s assertion that he has NEVER dived before, which was quite obviously a bold-faced lie. YOU man*ing blind-eyed f*ck. The manure you are spouting makes you look so f*cking stupid, just as this video comp. does for Rooney. Tw*t!
    Oh, and thx for the middle school equivalent to a physics lesson. Maybe YOU are the one who should try and RUN a few strides besides from the police or your child support payments. (or to the boozer to cash your pogey check)

  8. Wow kawalan is an angry angry semi-remedial kinda guy. pretty hard to argue with video evidence of multiple awful dives, but I salute the insane quixotic effort. if only for it’s total disregard for physical reality.

    funny thing is rooney is a fairly honest player and so is eduardo. i don’t think either are particularly known as floppers, certainly not more than you’d exepect of any top quality CF.

    I guess the Arsenal exasperation is the arbitrary singling out one player over one incident. i think i could swallow it if UEFA were going to make a scheme of it, cause really no one likes a dive; but them now saying it’s a one off, i just don’t see how that’s acceptable.

    And then we’ve got Rooney and SAF preening around like they’re whiter than white, well that’s just too much. No-one has the stones to come out and say “Eduardo did what any good centre forward does”. The only thing that separates his dive from any other is Boruc being a good enough keeper to get his hand out of the way.

    Because there is a difference between playing for contact and diving, and I see playing for contact perfectly acceptable if it’s the most advantageous course of action in the given position. You do want to see players try to stay up where it’s sensible, but if some mug sticks a leg out in the box that’s his mistake and it’d be yours to ignore it if a better shot’s not on.

    Personally I dont understand why Rooney started going down so early on Saturday. All he needed to do was stay up for another foot or so and there’s legit contact there. As it was that was a dive. Don’t blame the ref one bit as all the conditions were there for a pen, but as it was: Rooney went down before any contact.

    No ones saying Eduardo didn’t dive, just that to single him out in such a way is cruel and unusual and does nothing to improve the overall diving situation. It just serves to label him unfairly as a diver and to tar Arsenal with a brush we deserve no more than any other top flight team.

  9. Hi Tim, Good compilation you got there. Could you please, if its at all possible, email the Chelsea-Bosingwa clip, as well as the Arsenal-Campbell clip, to Sky Sports news with an appropriate caption along the lines of: Who is lying now, Rooney or his manager? I think they need to see it. And that twat, John Terry, the dullard England team captain, who claimed today that English players don’t dive. It’s not in there nature. They all need to face up to their lies.

    By the way, it does look like UEFA do not have balls at all or what do you guys make of this?
    http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_5535065,00.html

  10. Pingback: Twitted by maf73
  11. Let us get this straight once and for all Gooners, do not keep reinforcing the concept that Dudu dived!!!!!

    Look carefully at the video evidence, his right foot was deflected by Dohfuc’s shin. If you see it from the referee’s viewpoint, Dohfuc was lucky to stay on the pitch.

    Again the ref called it a penalty, and none of the other officials contradicted him. Where’s the dive?

    As for Rooney, to say that he is honest, is like saying Al Capone was a single offence shoplifter. He will say what ever suits the moment and Fergie tells him to say.

    We must therefore assume that he is an unintentional diver, who has some psychological defect that impels him to throw himself on the ground at the slightest opportunity. A defect that he shares with El Horizonte, Ronaldo.

    Perhaps there should be a Divers Anonymous where players like Rooney can go and confess, ‘I am a serial diver, I can’t help myself, I realise it’s an illness, and I need help.’

    ‘That’s the way son confession is good for the soul, and remember, one day at a time.’

    Viva!

  12. This whole diving stuff really takes away the focus of what’s really important: Poor refereeing. The game has evolved so much in recent years into more fast action, that it simply requires the same level of fitness in referees as in players to cope with it. I cant understand how +40 yo overweighted referees can be refereeing the fastest and most phisical league in the world.

  13. Not to mention blatant biased refereeing. It would be great to know how many penalties a year are given at OT for the visit team.

  14. Soccer is one constant string of “cheats” interupted occasionally by some stroke of skill or genious that actually manages to overcome the shirt grabs, kick outs, close lines, rib jabs, foot stomps, pinches (yes, I guess the Mexicans actually pinch the American players incessantly), and of course bald face lies at every turn. All hands raised at every ball out of bounds, at every offsides, etc, etc, etc. Rooney of course fits right in to this long and storied tradition as do say 85% of the pro soccer players out there.

    All the above video examples are inexcusable dives except the first. I don’t think it was a penalty because the ball was sooo far gone that nothing was taken away by the contact. So then it becomes a question of was Almunia trying to hurt Ronney’s feet head first? Seems unlikely to me, so then your left with unintentional or clumbsy mis-timed contact uneffecting the run of play, not game changing penalty material for me.

    The reason it isn’t a dive in this case, even though he IS going to ground prior to contact, is that the contact was going to happen no matter what. This means the other option available was to follow through running and kick Mr Pickledickle, as you call him, in the head perhaps rendering him like Cech with a cracked head. I’m a little surprised he didn’t opt for this route being who he is, but hey, give him some credit that he didn’t, even if he was only interested in not hurting himself.

    Oh, and s**t, and f*ck, and whatever other required expletives I failed to weave in to the narative above.

  15. Or maybe, on looking at it one more time, Rooney is trying to plant his knee into Almunia’s head and do him unspeakable harm and only Almunia’s shoulder manages to sweep it all away at the last moment. – Who knows on these things really?

    1. @t-craig, hi Craig, good points. The point of today’s article is that Rooney says he never intentionally dived when video evidence clearly shows he’s a serial intentional diver.

      Thanks for reading and see you Sunday!

  16. Yes, great compilation. I drew talksport’s attention to it – they are STILL, can you believe it, complaining about cheating, while maintaining that Rooney is ‘basically honest’. Needless to say they ignored me. At least, I think they did – couldn’t be bothered to listen for long.

    A separate point: what are these thumbs up signs for? Friendly gesture, I guess, but has any comment ever got a thumbs down?

  17. Oh boy, that football365 article (link in LRV’s post) says it all. We should take those idiots at UEFA to the higher court someone mentioned yesterday.

  18. Great Job Tim. I was just wondering where are all the MANURE suppoerters who frequent this blog? I guess they are suffering from petit mal just like Mike Dean.

  19. I dont think anyone can disagree that in every single clip rooney has seen the contact coming and gone to ground because he is expecting contact.IMHO Eduardo does exactly the same thing against Celtic, but he gets caught out because Boruc see’s this coming and pulls out, making Eduardo look like a diver when he went down expecting contact. I’m sure most of you play football, as do I, when I have run attempted to run past a player and he has used his body, pulled my shirt or half tackled me, i’m sure all of you know more often then after this, you will get off balance and lose the ball or miss the chance. This is the reason Rooney and Eduardo go to ground once they expect challenges, but it is in the referee’s perception to give the foul or not.If you use this as a bench mark, countless players are guilty of this offence,however having played football I can sympathise with the players. However on the other hand you have players who clearly simulate diving by clipping their own heels, running into players after losing the ball, step on a defender feet purposefully and fall over. These are the real cheats of the the game and these players deserve no sympathy whatsoever. The Rooney penalty against Arsenal is clearly neither what I have explained above and is 100% a penalty, before you shout your mouths off let me explain. watch the whole clip giggsy’s pass, Rooney’s run onto the ball…Rooney just about gets on the end of the ball, while stretching to do so, which is why his trailing leg is lagging behind, however the real culprit here for Arsenal is the sheer stupidity of Almunia because if he does’nt come out Rooney fails to control the ball andit goes out for a goal kick.

    These are the real cheats of the the game and these players deserve no sympathy whatsoever.

  20. Excellent work Tim–even my wife loved it….

    This whole business is so over the top and so stupid that I think it’s going to be a good thing for us in the Champions League. The big thing is that the ref keeps saying it was a penalty and the other CL refs are gonna side with him (and by extension us) in future rounds of the tournament. For that reason, after we make our appeal, I actually hope that Dudu has to sit for two of our group matches. And when later we play Rooney, Ronaldo or Drogba (or other “honest” players who will instinctively go to ground) the refs will stand up for the wrong that has been done to them (and us) and the yellows will be flying. UEFA is parking itself into one tight cul-du-sac…

    A second thing…as Americans we are used to a tougher culture in sports and the writhing around (making a meal of contact) by clearly uninjured players is hard to take. When someone is really hurt we yell at them to get up and on with it. It hurts the game but it’s understandable given the poor and overburdened refereeing. The traditions of the game (something we don’t quite understand) will limit the # of refs & the use of video. The current limits on subs (another tradition based thing) make it good strategy for a team to purposely injure another team’s top player after the 3 subs have been used–even if a red card is given it’s still 10 on 10 (right?).

    The traditionalists will slam me on this, but I say get rid of the 18 yard box and enforce the free kick from the point of the penalty (if closer than 10yds, no wall. If Rooney flops on a goal line corner of the box and gets the call, let him try to score from there….

  21. I heard Waine Runey today said he would never dive, I applaud his sentiment and wish all players would follow his example. Unlike Wayne Rooney the thick eared shrek lookalike who has form for cheating!

  22. Success! Amazon have apparently withdrawn their disgusting product. Good to see Arsenal fans getting off their arses and making a fuss. I’d begun to think no one cared about anything (beyond the price of tickets at Emirates) and am really cheered that I was wrong. Allez fan power.

  23. The point isnt how many divers Arsenal has or any other team come to that.
    The point is that Rooney claims that he never dives.
    So why doesnt he just keep quiet

  24. One thing is lying but for Fergie and Rooney to sit and say that Rooney never dives is outrageously smug and self serving and an incredible piece of re-writing history books,and for Rooney to say or was it Fergie that he wouldnt like to win on a dubious penalty decision is probably the biggest cop out of all time,how many times have Cantona,Beskham,Rooney etc dived to earn Manure a point or three the list is endless.But will the media start a tirade against Rooney like they did against Dudu or Pires,no off course not he is just an honest english lad,what bollocks and what incredible double standard served by the useless english media.But we have earned ourselfes a dive when they come to Emirates and then let us see if the english media gets off their arses,i bet they will.

  25. Life is unfair. Having Mike Dean referee Arsenal games is unfair. UEFA making Eduardo a one time only example is unfair. Rooney being given a media platform to lie is unfair. Ferguson sans Ronaldo supporting a ban on Eduardo is unfair.

    Then something good happens and suddenly not all things are so unfair: http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/3349096/

    This clip has been used countless times for football parodies and it never gets old. Enjoy.

    You have to imagine that FIFA and UEFA would love to nail Arsenal some transfer problem. But we play by the rules and drive trucks through any loop holes that we find in other countries transfer policies concerning their young players.

  26. I think what Rooney’s trying to say is that he never INTENTIONALLY dives. All those dives of Rooney’s are the result of his deep-seated need to cheat, beg and steal in order to win a game. He doesn’t go out thinking that he’ll dive, he just does it out of instinct.

Related articles