Why do soccer players fake injuries

Anyone who has ever watched a soccer game knows that soccer players frequently fake injuries on the field, but newer audiences always wonder as to why they fake it so much. Actually, the reason why soccer players often act on the field as if they have received a serious injury is embedded in the rules of the game itself. If a player can convince the referee that he has been fouled illegally by a player in the opposite team, he would win for his team an advantage in the form of a free kick. A free kick is always an advantage to the receiving team as it means possession of the soccer ball, but the closer it is to the opponent team’s goal, the more important it becomes. The closer you are to the goal, the higher is your chance of scoring and if you happen to win a foul inside the marked penalty box of your opponent, then you will have won the ultimate prize, a penalty kick. A penalty kick is an open chance for one player to score a goal by placing and shooting the soccer ball from the penalty spot, with only the goal keeper to stop the ball from hitting the net inside the goal post. It is for this reason that forwards feign injury regularly near or inside the penalty box.

Faking injuries for the benefit of the game is accepted in soccer as a part of the game, but it may seem more malevolent when certain players actually fake injuries to get a strong opposition player off the field by fooling the referee into showing him a red card. Even a yellow card would hamper the player’s game because two of those in one match would also mean that he would have to sit out and his team will have to carry on in the game with ten men against the opponent’s eleven. Sometimes though, an experienced referee may notice the act and see the reason behind the act, and in such cases, the “actor” may himself be carded. Although a soccer game is full of feign injuries, terrible injuries also happen often enough and thus it becomes ever so hard for the match officials to differentiate the truth from the drama.