Brazil Has Faked The Most Injuries At The 2014 World Cup

 

Taking a dive or faking an injury isn’t something unique to soccer. There are phantom high sticks and elbows in hockey and basketball, NFL players who fake cramps and just this week Matt Carpenter got away with pretending he was hit by a pitch. But soccer is the sport most notorious for players writhing in pain, and this year’s World Cup has done little to erase that reputation. According to one report, no team at the tournament has faked more such injuries than the home nation, Brazil.

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). The count may include some players who were legitimately hurt but still capable of returning to action, but with 293 instances to work with that grey area is likely quite small. Not to mention that the WSJ report found “injuries” suffered by winning teams – in other words, those with the incentive to drain the clock – resulted in four times as much wasted time.

Through their first two games, Brazilian players have gone down 17 times before returning to play. That Brazil leads the list shouldn’t be much of a surprise for anyone watching the World Cup. The team’s players could hardly keep their feet in the tournament’s opening game against Croatia, a match in which Brazil took a late lead thanks to a controversial dive by Fred. The subsequent penalty kick was put in by phenom striker Neymar, who has long drawn plenty of ire for his acting abilities.

While Brazil has flopped the most, its players are quite resilient, spending just 3:18 rolling and writhing, which ranks right around the middle of the pack. 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. Players from Bosnia and Herzegovina have been the strongest on their feet, appearing to be injured only twice for a total 24 seconds through their first two games.
North American teams have been exceeding expectations at the World Cup, but the four CONCACAF teams have also appeared injury prone, all sitting among the tournament’s seven floppiest teams. Mexico and Costa Rica are ahead of the United States in terms of the number of “injuries” suffered – 15 and 13, respectively, to 12 – but they have spent much less time acting. In fact, the Yanks’ total injury time of 6:24 ranks fifth-most among World Cup teams.