June 27 – The Wall Street Journal has published its own findings on divers and writhers at the world cup. In an article that laments the nuisance of ‘injuries’, they have tallied up all the incidents in which a team’s player has seemingly feigned hurt, accumulating the total time spent portraying the absent agony, which they have dubbed ‘writhing time’.
The data is collected from the first 32 matches, which means the first two games of every team. The only way to escape the chart’s condemnation was by suffering an injury that “forced players to be substituted from the game and to miss, or potentially miss, a match”.
This is perhaps an overly narrow scope, if you delve deeper into the chart’s figures, for it would include genuine injuries, like Clint Dempsey’s bloodied nose, as potentially a ‘writihing’, but you generally get the point.
It is worth noting that ‘writhing time’ is calculated in terms of the attention given to ‘injuries’. The timer starts when the referee halts play for the distressed victim, or accused depending on how you look at it, and the timer stops when the player is back on their feet.
239 cases in total have been brought against the world cup playing staff, which accounts for 118 minutes and 21 seconds of time dedicated to the annoyance of fans.
Brazil top the list for the amount of ‘injuries’ with 17, but their writhing time is eclipsed by Honduras, who totaled a significant (perhaps magnificent) 7 minutes and 40 seconds. Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, contributed a meek 2 ‘injuries’ and just 24 seconds to the cause.
The Italians, much admonished for gamesmanship, only managed 7 ‘injuries’ worth 1 minute and 36 seconds, which puts them far enough down the list to re-evaluate such perceptions. Similarly, Argentina and Portugal have not played to their reputation, as they rest healthily low down the chart too (in fact, both below the recently and repetitively sighed “too honest” English).
It is difficult to see causation or correlation between instances of gamesmanship and success. For example, the successful Dutch have spent very little time writhing with ‘injuries’, whilst the equally successful Chileans are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Similarly, the woeful Hondurans are near topping the charts, just as the woeful Bosnia and Herzegovinians bottom it.
However, a telling piece of information provided, in keeping with intuitive assumptions, is that after Chile going ahead against Spain, they had 11 ‘injuries’, which is a greater number than 24 teams managed in total over the course of two games.
Here is the table in full:
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