In Typical Fashion, Europeans Found To Have Flopped The Most At World Cup

Harrison Lee10 years ago

Flopping and soccer go hand in hand. It’s become such an attraction that it has spilled into other sports and it’s ruining games as we know it. Our European counterparts have been known to be some of the biggest pussies in the world, so when The Wall Street Journal released its research of the World Cup’s most serial floppers, it was no surprise to see that European teams were amongst the leaders. Brazil leads the World Cup for most times gone down, while France is second for longest time spent on the ground.

From Forbes:

Through their first two games, Brazilian players have gone down 17 times before returning to play. Honduras, at a lengthy 7:40, has spent the most time appearing injured. Close behind Honduras is France, which spent 7:19 on the ground – and with five fewer instances.

It’s important to note that these results only take into account the first two games of pool play. Based off my calculations, that would pump Brazil up to 42.5 flops. That number still seems small, because you’d swear these guys go down faster than your slam at 3 a.m. after you’ve had way too many shots of tequila.

The Wall Street Journal followed the tournament’s first 32 games and recorded, and timed, every instance of a player appearing to be injured before subsequently returning to the game (the study omitted the nine players who left the game after being injured).

Recording and timing every instance where a player took a dive would be too much work, although I’d have no problem getting the intern to sit down and do that. He’d have to watch each game three times just to make sure he counted right.