Diving isn’t usually punished, but it was here.
When Pedro Obiang cut across the back of Kevin Mirallas, the Spaniard did the usual charade of holding his hands up and tucking his feet in, so as not to appear to make contact, having been beaten to the mark. Often, in spite of these measures, contact is delivered, and the attacker is usually rewarded with a free kick. But here, no genuine contact was actually made by Obiang, and so Mirallas, with the defence lurching, had an opportunity to show his worth. But, instead, he decided to go down anyway, crumpling pathetically, and writhing in the general direction of referee Anthony Taylor. Taylor, acting in rare fashion indeed, booked the Belgian for diving.
Later on, Mirallas’s duplicity came back to haunt him. The recipient of a misplaced, over-hit Lukaku pass, Mirallas attempted a hugely ill-advised lunge to retrieve it, but careered into Aaron Cresswell after the West Ham defender had long since cleared. A second yellow, a clear decision, and suddenly the embarrassing booking from earlier became a costly one. Diving, so often unseen or unpunished, was seen with clarity and punished without mercy; it’s about time.
