Let us salute Didier Zokora, the man who brought the Gary Player Principle up to date. “You know what?” Player famously remarked. “The more I practise, the luckier I get.” Zokora was lucky for exactly the same reason on Sunday when he won the penalty that allowed Tottenham Hotspur to beat Portsmouth.
It was a beautiful dive, setting a new and dizzying standard for the dive of the season. For this was not one of those spontaneous, improvised, opportunistic dives, this was a dive premeditated, set up and, from the look of the thing, much rehearsed.
It was a dive that flowed, set up by the backheel, moving inexorably into the tumble in a place where the leg of Pedro Mendes clearly was not. He overbalanced, Martin Jol, the Spurs head coach, said, just as Guo Jingjing overbalanced on the three-metre board to win her gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
The Times' Chief Sports Writer Simon Barnes on why action must be taken: Zokora Dive
[Following on from Martin Jol’s claim that Didier Zokora’s dive was down to the player being off-balance, the article also higlights other "mind-boggling excuses" presented in the aftermath of such happenings...]
And just in case you haven't seen Zokora in action: Zokora Diving B*stard
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