The Copa Del Rey match between Valencia and Atletico Madrid won’t be remembered for its football or score, but for two incidents that took center stage: The pathetic dive and injury faking from Diego Costa, and referee Clos Gomez tripping over a player while strutting in reverse.
Where do we begin? With the bad. Atletico were up 1-0, and had a chance to make sure the tie was over with another away goal. The problem was that despite Diego Costa becoming more and more of a household name, not just in Spain but among many football fans, his bush league antics haven’t really been taken out of him.
Costa preferred diving than scoring the goal, and when he realized he was caught in the act with the referee approaching to book him, he decided to flap around on the ground to show as if he’s really injured.
Diving is appalling, but there are always levels to it, like for everything. Costa didn’t just dive, cheat and was caught. He also executed it in the most awful of ways, that even without a replay and from every angle it was possible to see that there was no contact. There should be a suspension for this, but there won’t be.
Clos Gomez himself was involved in a memorable moment that didn’t involve taking out a yellow card. Gomez was backing up, not looking behind him, while Atletico’s Josuha Guilavogui was tying his shoe, facing the other direction. It resulted in a collision that saw Gomez perform a neat little backflip and land on his back, although no harm was done, which made it worthy of a laugh or two.