Soccer is a really good and fun sport, but only if you play it for fun or as good natured amateur.
As soon as there is money and fame at stake, the way football works leaves too much room for foul and dishonourable play.
Continuation of derailment:
Even without money or fame or anything, there can be foul play, but then its mostly over aggressiveness, which lead more to trying to stand on your feet or getting back up asap, than diving and crying. Way more interesting, even though it can lead to trash matchs, or even injuries. If nothing bad happens, those who play soccer for the sheer enjoyment of it accept tough contacts and bruises with composure. Really good street soccer is as manly as professional hockey, football or rugby.
The few times I watch professional soccer, I cry my eyes out at how this sport devolved. Some teams have a large number of proud players who do not fake as much as others though.
When two teams like that meets on the field, and are in good shape, it can be a very fluid and interesting show of sportmanship. Sadly its not everytime that it happens, and even good and honest soccer players can be drawn to the dark side, especially when the opposite team does it a lot and very efficiently. Faking at soccer is a plague, I dont know any sport who reached that level of professional stupidity.
Most sports have a "draw fouls" part (sometimes its an integral part of the gameplay, sometimes its heavily frown upon, or a mix of it) but I have never seen a sport where pretending to have the balance and pain threshold of a 3 years old has become the norm.
There has been some reforms in soccer recently, and the sport is going closer and closer toward a modernisation of refereeing. I pray for video refereeing to become an integral part of soccer and that referee can either pause the game to check fake or not, or retro-act on a foul play and draw yellow or red cards on a past foul during the game itself.
Good luck to Kalmar Unionen people in this war, by the way
