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Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP file
When Abby Wambach of the U.S. National Team gets hurt, she bounces back up -- except for when she broke her leg a few years ago. Not so much with the guys. Most women soccer players get up off the ground after an injury an average of 30 seconds faster than the guys, a new study shows.
If you’ve seen a soccer match, you’ve probably seen this scene play out: a grown man falls to the turf, clutching his lower leg in apparent agony, only to walk away seconds later, unharmed.
Such “embellishment,” as it is known, can border on absurdity, but players have been running this gambit for years in an attempt to gain sympathy from the match referee.
But women don’t play that game.
In a discovery that gives us yet another reason to watch Wednesday’s Women’s World Cup action, researchers in Germany have found that women are much less likely to engage in this sort of ridiculous behavior.
Sports scientists at the Chair of Training Science and Sports Informatics at Technische Universität München studied 56 football games, timing stoppages in play. When they compared this data between genders, they found, among other things, that women are much less likely to roll around on the ground like they are engulfed in flames than their male counterparts.
No matter the reason for the stoppage in play -- a substitution, a goal, a throw-in, or a foul -- female players will restart play at a much quicker rate. The difference for “injuries” is much more pronounced -- men spend on average 30 seconds longer on the ground.
According to lead researcher Martin Lames, the women’s desire to get on with it results in a faster, more entertaining match.
“As one hardly notices stoppages below 10 seconds there is an impression of a more continuously running game,” Lames wrote in an e-mail. “If one’s interest is more a matter-of-fact one, i.e. in the game itself, women’s games will be more appreciated.”
“Especially if one is offended by pretending to be more injured than is really true, arguing with the referee, spitting on the pitch, demanding yellow cards for the opponent and so on,” Lames adds.
Lames cites increased spectatorship and media attention as the primary reason the fellas resort to showmanship. On the guys’ side, his study used matches from German champion Bayern München, who average nearly 70,000 fans per match. With such a crowd, playing to the fans with an elaborate or drawn out goal celebrations is a “tacit norm,” Lames said.
However, the ladies’ sporting behavior can also be to their detriment. Male players commonly use game-delaying tactics (unnecessary shoe-tying, “dropping” the ball before a throw-in, etc.) to waste time when their team has the lead late in the match. Commonly referred to as “gamesmanship,” Lames’ study did not observe this phenomenon in the women’s game.
That’s not to say it never happens. Brazil’s Erika was widely panned for simulating injury deep into the overtime period against the United States.
Soccer detractors commonly point to embellishment as one of the game’s biggest flaws. The women, it seems, have trumped the men in this regard.
As if we needed another reason to watch this sensational U.S. World Cup squad.
Andrew Winner is a freelance soccer writer. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/AndrewWinnerMLS
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men and women both need to stop faking it and play the damn game they are there to play .
Guess it depends on the sport. In basketball, it's just the opposite.
A soccer pitch; a magical place where men become a bunch of whimpering sissies and women all look like men with an extra chromosome.
Clearly the person who wrote this article knows very little about soccer. It's true that men fake injuries more often than not, but it's not to gain sympathy or anything of the sort, it's to run the clock. Unlike most American sports such as basketball and football, the clock ticks constantly in soccer, so players use this dirty trick to waste time (particularly when they're in the lead). In addition, this is also done mostly when defenders who have already been carded attempt to tackle them (2nd card = expulsion with no replacement). It's not because they're wusses or because they're more theatrical (although this can be argued), but because it's worked in the past and if it isn't broke, don't fix it.
If you watch any international games, you'll notice that countries where soccer is relatively young or they are not too competitive in the world stage, players do this less than in countries with a long soccer history.
Women's soccer can be more exciting at times because it's faster than men's soccer, but the reason for that is that there is less at stake than in men's soccer so there is less strategy involved. Also the teams can take more risks by playing a less defensive minded game because of what is at stake.
In the end, soccer is a business and all things happen for a reason in business.
"It's true that men fake injuries more often than not,"
Obviously you don't know much about soccer or common sense then. I've seen quite a few soccer games and almost never did I see a man fake an injury. Mens soccer is generally more popular, so obviously it would seem like they milk it more.
"Women's soccer can be more exciting at times because it's faster than men's soccer,"
Nope, men are much faster on the field and off. And theirs is generally more popular.
People have the wrong idea about diving. Diving is a result of the effort to try and make soccer a "friendly" game. You want to know how soccer was meant to be played check out clips from back in the day. A tackle from the side wouldn't have been called, a diver would have been laughed at and humiliated.
Then at some point in the late 80s, early 90s they decided they were going to change football into some stupid family game. Next thing you know it's a penalty to slide from the side or behind even if you don't touch the player. It's illegal to do this or that or this, not out of safety but out of trying to get the game to appeal to women and children.
So, in regards to diving I say the leagues get what they deserved for having dumbed down the game and I applaud all divers until the rule changes of the past 20 years are undone.
Soccer is still a tougher sport than basketball. I swear, whatever gene causes excessive height also causes a buildup of cowardice and stupidity. It's pretty funny to me that soccer gets criticized for diving when there are people who kick at legs and feet but when a basketball player flops nobody says a thing. Or Kobe stepping into the block attempt on a shot he was never gonna take. That is just as bad as diving. Essentially the act of making a penalty where there is none is the problem and it happens many many times more in basketball than soccer. Ref he touched my wrist wahhhhhh
I agree...there is really so little defense in BB . All they can do is wave their arms , and then a guy just shoots at a basket not guarded by a goalie. LOL
wAAAAH...he touched my arm...go to the free-throw line and shoot at empty basket...so retarded.
A couple of my nephews love soccer, and I always ask them, "What can't you do when you're lying on the ground?"
"You can't score a goal."
"Correct."
Embellishment? The practice is known as "diving". Everyone who knows football knows that except Andrew Winner it seems.
Dictionaries are our friends.
em-bel-lish-ment -- a fictitious addition, as to a factual statement.
Diving is when they fall when not fouled with much contact or not fouled at all. Embellishment includes diving, faking a foul entirely or making a foul seem more forceful than it really was, such as a finger touching a player's cheek and he goes down like his eye was gouged.
My theory for why the women flop less: because women referees are less likely to put up with antics like flopping from a fellow female.
Too bad women flop more. This article is bullsh*t.
Go USA women ! Go , go , go !
*CRUSH ON HEATHER MITTS* She`s SO cute !
This article seems like BS to me. Women generally 'milk it' much more in every sport and aspect of life. I don't think soccer is an exception. Mens soccer is more popular so obviously since more people watch it, it may seem like this is the case. Guaranteed if they were the same popularity, women would be 'milking it' much more. The research seems false, "The difference for “injuries” is much more pronounced -- men spend on average 30 seconds longer on the ground." -it would be extremely difficult to get an exact average of this. Also it contradicts studies that show females of all sort generally over-exaggerate injuries and seek help for them. So men being on the ground for longer(esp 30 secs) sounds extremely farfetched.
"the women’s desire to get on with it results in a faster, more entertaining match."
I don't now if this "desire to get on with it" exists(at least not with injuries) for women either. I've never seen it among female soccer players. As for 'more entertaining match', seriously doubt it. Mens soccer is way more popular than womens, and people generally get more excited for mens soccer as well and enjoy it more. All in all though, the article seems like rubbish, and the research doesn't seem legitimate enough to be taken into further consideration.
And of course, women would never use a physiological condition like pregnancy to elicit vast sympathy from men, including requests for midnight trips to the grocery store for Ben and Jerry's® "Schweddy Balls" ice cream and Claussen® pickles, really . . .
Really! :D