Marc Cucurella’s ridiculous Remembrance Sunday dive will send your dad into overdrive
Despite its controversial nature, diving is an art form. Like it or not, it takes skill to master and if you’re not doing it, you’re getting caught out by it.
A tactic from the playbook of the dark arts, diving is perhaps the one manipulation of the rules that can turn any normal football fan into Alan Brazil at peak redness with how much anger it provokes.
We’ve all been there. Turned a blind eye to our favourite players going down like a sack of spuds, but then moments later unleashed a whirlwind of rage from your seat – or even more embarrassingly – towards the television set in the house.
It’s an enigma, is simulation. While we’ve all been left fuming by it several times, you can’t blame those who can pull it off, especially in a day and age where penalties and red cards are dished out for nothing.
Marc Cucurella, though, needs a few lessons in the art of diving if he’s going to be trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes – in one of the biggest games of the season, no less.
As Chelsea and Manchester City played out a breathtaking 4-4 draw at Stamford Bridge, the headlines reflected the chaotic nature of the game and the two standout performances of Raheem Sterling and Cole Palmer against their former employers.
And rightly so – if you’re boring and hate everything truly menacing about the beautiful game.
While everybody else was busy busting a lung to try and eke out even the slightest advantage for their team with a moment of excellence, Cucurella was busy putting a target on his back for when Chelsea visit the Etihad Stadium, becoming the most hated man on the blue side of Manchester with a dive for the ages.
It was so ridiculous that we should probably fast-track him to the WWE Performance Centre and get him inside the wrestling ring as soon as possible.
If not the WWE, then certainly Broadway, because he put on a clinic in acting to try and sell the most pathetic piece of simulation you’ll witness this season.
Your dad is raging, isn’t he? On Remembrance Sunday, too. Our beautiful Barclays gone forever.
Country’s gone down the pan. The Stone Island-wearing racists didn’t defend our cenotaphs for this, Marc. Shame on you.
Fair play to Cucurella for even trying something so absurd, we suppose. Phil Foden hasn’t even stuck a leg out before he’s on the deck as if a sniper had taken him out.
Combine that drop with a customary clutch of the shin and double roll to really sell the agony and you’ve got acting that wouldn’t look out of place in Hollywood.
They should probably throw Foden into a padded cell and interrogate him before it’s too late – after all, it sees he possesses a way with the force or some other kind of superhuman telepathy, that forced Cucurella to the floor in a heap without actually getting near him.
You won’t be surprised to learn that the Spaniard walked away from the challenge – very brave of him – and did so without receiving a booking for simulation. No, really.
We’re not trying to heap even more pressure on referees in the United Kingdom, but come on.
If you don’t laugh, you cry. We’re certainly laughing – both at the ridiculousness of Cucurella’s dive and the fact it went completely unpunished.
By Mitch Wilks
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