eduardo wins appeall against 2 match ban for diving

If you watch Eduardo's right foot (on 23 seconds in that youtube clip) - it goes sideways just as Boruc's knee made contact (or nearly did - whichever view you take). I think that'd be really hard to fake. He also fell slightly to the right. In my view this suggests some contact. He was diving in expectation of the keepers hands catching him, so he'd have dived straight forward.

My current take is that he dived, but got a little lucky that Boruc did make contact because that gave his dive a degree of "authenticity". Like osarusan said in post 2 or 3 above, just because there was some contact doesn't mean it wasn't a dive.

Despite all that, I don't think Eduardo is a serial cheat by any means - certainly not in the EPL, I haven't seen much of him for Croatia. On basis of what I've seen he's of far better character than the likes of Drogba, Gerrard or Rooney. How Gerrard escaped reproach after his late dive against Atletico Madrid(?) last year is beyond me. Dumb challenge, yes, but total and utter cheating. Not for the first time either.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

If you watch Eduardo's right foot (on 23 seconds in that youtube clip) - it goes sideways just as Boruc's knee made contact (or nearly did - whichever view you take). I think that'd be really hard to fake. He also fell slightly to the right. In my view this suggests some contact. He was diving in expectation of the keepers hands catching him, so he'd have dived straight forward.

My current take is that he dived, but got a little lucky that Boruc did make contact because that gave his dive a degree of "authenticity". Like osarusan said in post 2 or 3 above, just because there was some contact doesn't mean it wasn't a dive.

Despite all that, I don't think Eduardo is a serial cheat by any means - certainly not in the EPL, I haven't seen much of him for Croatia. On basis of what I've seen he's of far better character than the likes of Drogba, Gerrard or Rooney. How Gerrard escaped reproach after his late dive against Atletico Madrid(?) last year is beyond me. Dumb challenge, yes, but total and utter cheating. Not for the first time either.

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english press / t.v. tend to not admit their own players go down rather easy.. gerrard in particular gets away with murder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVb2gbMtN3I

The TV angle from directly behind the goal, the one TV3 used to advertise a Celtic game, shows that there was plenty of space between Boruc and Eduardo when he had the alleged point of contact. The one dimensional Croatian soccer report video clip is the only angle where there is some doubt but it doesn't hold water when compared with the other angles.

I have only seen that behind goal camera angle shown on TV3.