Thursday, April 18, 2013

How Bad was Nielsen's "Acting"?

Probably the biggest talking point of last night's game between Kansas City and New York was the red card to Juninho at the end of the game as he fired a ball directly at Jimmy Nielsen.  Referee Allen Chapman didn't waste any time handing the referee a card. Nielsen ended up on the ground after the shot and stayed there for a few minutes milking the injury.  I wasn't really happy with the way that Nielsen behaved after getting hit, I felt he did overdo it considering how quickly the red card was produced, but I wasn't pissed at him for it either.  Then today I read this tweet:




And did a double take.

For those of you that don't know what the guy is referring to, watch this video:



And for comparison, here's the incident from last night:



Now I know that being a fan of Sporting KC I am a bit bias but that a horrible over exaggeration from the guy. As I said above, Nielsen overreacted to the contact, but I don't blame him for going down.  During the replay of the play, New York's color analyst, Shep Messing said that Nielsen gets more contact coming out of the tunnel before the game, and others said he's taken harder shots in warmups.  The difference is that unlike those instances, Nielsen wasn't expecting that.  If you want I'm more than happy to go out and kick a ball straight at you from about 12 yards away and see if you go down, and my shot is probably no where near as hard as Juninho's last night.

Unlike the previously mentioned Rivaldo dive, at least Nielsen went down holding the right part of his body, grabbing his wrist, while Rivaldo gets the ball in the thigh and goes down clutching his face. I find the fact that he calls the Nielsen acting worse than that down right laughable. 

Again I'm not condoning Nielsen's acting, I'm condemning the overacting that he (and other Sporting players) did last night.  But Nielsen's is in no way worse than Rivaldo's dive at the World Cup in 2002. So let's have a laugh at an extreme overreaction.

5 comments:

Eric said...

Jimmy had a good reason to dive here. After Junimho kicked the ball, he was getting red. However, how does Jimmy respond to that? If he stay up on his feet, he has to charge Juninho. There is no other option to such a blatant offense. Jimmy could likely have gotten a yellow or even a red card if he improperly reacts to the hit in the face. Instead he goes down until the red comes out and Sinovic has come in run crowd control. While he didn't go down from pain, his gut reaction to hit the deck was by far the smartest soccer decision available to him.

Anonymous said...

here is a question, and i honestly don't know the answer- if he wants the trainers to come spray his wrist does he have to go down? can he just stand there holding his wrist and call them over? i mean, any other time i have seen a training staff come for an injured player, the player had to lie down on the field for the ref to stop play. i don't know if it is different in a dead ball situation.

anyway, it was pretty bad, and pretty annoying at the end of the game...but i almost blame the scheduling committee more than sporting. obviously it is in the player's heads that they need to get through this road trip by any means necessary, conserving energy whenever they can. and as a poor traveler myself i can hardly blame them.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

For Me, Rupert Fryers exaggeration was worse than Jimmy Nielson's.
What an embarrassment.

Anonymous said...

So Juninho loses his head in 90+ minute and gets a well-deserved red card and people are going to sit there and criticize Jimmy for wasting time?

It's Juninho's fault for even giving Jimmy such an opportunity to waste time.

Its a annoying when players do waste time like but its entirely expected when you're up late in a game, on the road, and have the opportunity to take some time off clock and lock up the win.