Rivaldo with the Worst Dive in the History of Football

As posted by my sister-in-blog Laurie over at The Offside, here’s a nice little collection of the evil of modern football known as diving. The “Star Wars” bad guys theme played on some sort of tin whistle somehow seems very appropriate. Horrific and comical as all of these undoubtedly are, it’s Rivaldo’s 2002 World Cup flop against Turkey (0:44 on the video) that makes me angriest, just for the level of deceit involved.

Rivaldo faked not just the force of impact (were World Cup 2002 balls made of lead?) but also the location of said impact (by about three feet.) Wonderful player that Rivaldo was and or is, that one moment was just unforgivable. FIFA thought so too, and fined him £5,180.