Fans of the world's most popular game
know that turning a small foul into a death performance worthy of La Scala is
just one of soccer's oldest and most universally despised tactics.
During the 2014 World Cup first 32 games, there were 302 players who
could be seen at some point rolling around in pain, crumpling into a fetal
position or lying lifeless on the pitch as the referee stopped the match. These
theatrical episodes ate up a total of 132 minutes of clock, a metric we have
decided to call "writhing time."
To be fair, it is actually possible to get hurt
playing soccer. There were nine injuries in total that forced players to be
substituted from the game and to miss, or potentially miss, a match. These were
discarded. That left 293 cases of potential embellishment that collectively
took up 118 minutes, 21 seconds.
The study showed one thing emphatically: The amount of
histrionics your players display during a match correlates strongly to what the
scoreboard says. Players on teams that were losing their games accounted for 40
"injuries" and nearly 12.5 minutes of writhing time. But players on
teams that were winning—the ones who have the most incentive to run out the
clock—accounted for 103 "injuries" and almost four times as much
writhing.
So with that cleared away, here are the
"winners" of our first-ever international soccer injury-embellishment
awards.
The Team Most Commonly Seen in Anguish: Brazil. There were 17 incidents in two games when a member of
the Seleção was
seen on the ground in pain—the most of any country. World Cup poster boy Neymar
had five such "injuries," the most on his team. In every case he was
back on his feet within 15 seconds.
The Overall Writhing-Time Champions: Honduras. Los Catrachos spent the most time on the ground or being tended to
by trainers: seven minutes and 40 seconds to be exact. Naturally, five minutes
and 10 seconds of that came in the first half against France when the match was
tied.
The Team Most Likely to Grin and Bear it: Bosnia and
Herzegovina. These World Cup
newbies obviously don't get how this works. They only had two
"injuries" in two games for a total of 24 seconds of writhing time.
The Team With the Most Carnage in One Game: Chile. While they protected an early lead against Spain, the
Chileans tallied 11 "injuries," more than 24 other teams had in two
games.
The Fastest "Injury" Yet: Enner Valencia,
Ecuador. Against
Honduras, Valencia was on the ground, clutching his leg after four seconds.
Worst Use of a Stretcher: 5 players (tie) Of the nine players carried off in these matches, five
returned—all in less than 90 seconds, including American DaMarcus Beasley.
