Foul Play: Soccer’s “Infamous Thespians” and the Cultural Politics of Diving

“Diving” or “simulation,” according to FIFA’s Laws of the Game, is an attempt to deceive referees by feigning injury or pretending to have sustained a foul. When examined as a performance strategy, simulation in football reveals a tacit reliance on the aesthetic criteria of realist acting and incites an antitheatrical discourse that services xenophobic anxieties in the new Europe.