Niasse in his post-match comments doesn't claim he was tripped by Dann,knocked to the floor or even pushed a little.He talks about his reaction, not as unavoidable but as a decision he made to go to ground and as far as I am concerned that is simulation.

Indeed, his post match comments read like a confession with an attempt at justification. He was clear in claiming he chose to go to ground.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Totally disagree.

There is nothing in the 'Laws' to say that it is a foul every time there is contact in the area or elsewhere.Football is a contact sport - players make contact at corners, players come together all the time.

Niasse said that he felt contact, he was in the box and that all he had to do was go to the floor. Nowhere does this suggest that Dann's minimal contact sent him tumbling.Niasse doesn't claim he was tripped or knocked to the ground, he talks about a decision he made to plummet to the turf so in my eyes this is a dive.

In baseball, if a pitch hits the batter, the batter is immediately put on first base. It's hard to score runs in baseball, so baserunners are considered very valuable, and a freebie like getting hit by the pitch is a big mistake by the pitcher.

The trick is, though, that an overmatched batter cannot simply lean in and take one for the team. He is required to make an effort to avoid being hit and, if the umpire deems he didn't, it's called a strike on the batter. I think we could learn something here.

Could we not require football players to make a reasonable effort to stay on their feet? We all love when referees play the advantage rule, so why do we also accept that a player can make his own judgment as to the legality of a challenge and throw himself to the floor?

Of course referees miss fouls (far too much) but, if the foul is not enough to prevent play or the player from continuing, why should we stop the flow of the game? Make the player try to continue, and let the ref decide - even after a short amount of progression as is currently allowed - whether to pull play back and award the foul. If nothing else, this extra moment of play will allow the referee a beat to consider the impact of the contact and decide to blow or not accordingly.

In the case of Niasse, any incidental contact with Dann was not impeding his progress and he was about to be in on goal. He decided that a spot kick was a better option than his own scoring opportunity, and that's completely back-to-front on how that decision should be made.

Lionel Messi is pretty good; be like Messi. [Link]

Edited by Ray in Houston (01 Dec 2017 2.35pm)

We don't do possession; we do defense and attack. Everything else is just wa**ing with a football.

true. but you are evading the point like all the others. please lets stick to this one incident without bringing `shielding the ball out` and all the other stuff you peeps have brought up. your post is quite ironic - on the one hand Niasse is a total cheat and on the other he`s honest in stating he exaggerated the force of Danns` block. the FA chose to make an example in this case and its a farce. its a joke of an amendment that is unworkable and will be seen in time to have so many grey areas it`ll be quietly forgotten.

Or as was the case the independent adjudicators decided that he had simulated a foul. It is rather difficult to make an example of something if that something as you are claiming never occurred in the first place.