The Diving Report

An analysis of deceptive behaviours observed in the 116 matches of the 2018 Men’s World Cup in Russia and 2019 Women’s World Cup in France.

Understanding behaviors

This report is based on a non-verbal behavioural study from the University of Portsmouth, UK, which has identified specific behaviours players engage in when trying to deceive referees.

Collecting the data

We used the regular TV feed in order to collect data. In many cases, we focused on the Video Replays to analyse players’ behaviours in more detail.

Disclaimers:

Quality assurance and bias mitigation processes were used to minimise tracking errors. Nevertheless, results should be taken as directional rather than exact.
This report doesn’t claim to have statistical significance in categorising players’ behaviour over time. It’s only a representation of a measurement model applied to the 2 tournaments tracked.

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What you’ll find

A detailed explanation of how to identify dives
A description of the measurement model used to track dives during the World Cups
25+ insights from our data analysis
Much more besides!

Women dived
less than men

43% of male players didn’t dive

63% of female players didn’t dive

All teams dived

Some teams’ diving had concrete impact on others

Use this chart to visualize how many times a dive from one team (left side) unfairly impacted another team (right side). The number and size of the connections represent how many cards were produced, goals were scored or score advantages were changed due to those dives.

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