Should simulation be upgraded to a red card? – Part 2

Surely it is in the interest of the game to even up the risk vs reward situation surrounding diving. I think that it should be a straight red for any player caught simulating. It is effectively cheating. It is not much different to a defender taking out a striker who is through on goal. If that player is sent off for denying a clear goal scoring opportunity, then a player who is caught simulating should be sent off for “attempting to create a clear goal scoring opportunity through simulating contact with another player”. It could genuinely come under “cheating, un-sportsmen like conduct and in bad taste of the game.

I am aware that there will be some people that say that a send off is to harsh for someone simulating. Ummm is it? Players get sent off for handballs on the goal line even if they are unintentional. No one accidently simulates that’s just someone tripping over or falling. Diving is a conscious decision made by an individual in order to attempt to gain an advantage by exploiting the rules of the game. That should be a sendoff.

Now Let’s talk about how you would be able to catch this out. Thankfully there is VAR, VAR would be able to at anytime in the match look over an incident and communicate to the referee on the field what has happened. In the next stoppage in play the referee would then walk over to the player who simulated and send them off. Play on from wherever the ball went out or was stopped.