Chucky, I think the Cucurella hair pull incident sums up the dilemma in this whole thing. The ref should have given the foul but they didn’t. So you could forgive Cucurella for making a meal of it next time so he does get the foul. He shouldn’t have to do that but this is a problem that people thought VAR would solve but it can’t, ultimately because the VAR refs are still subjective. But the players know that if they feign injury they will tend to get the decision they want because no referee wants to risk overlooking a serious injury to a player – particularly on a goalkeeper with regards to Mendy yesterday. But it works both ways, some players will feel justified in making a meal of something, like Cucurella to ensure they rightly get the free kick, or a penalty, if say, unfairly barged off the ball but able to stay on their feet. But then you can also abuse the system to feign injury to get a foul given.
I really don’t know what the solution to that is. All you can hope is the refs judge things as best they can taking everything into account. In an ideal world the referees probably need a bit of time to make the best decision. But then the fans and viewing public don’t want long decision making which disturbs the flow of the game.
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