Rangers: Fabio Silva’s dad Jorge defends his diving

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Ibrox Noise

·09 de junho de 2024

Rangers: Fabio Silva’s dad Jorge defends his diving

As fans will be aware, Ibrox Noise is covering the fallout of ex-Rangers striker Fabio Silva’s departure from the club, and especially he and his father Jorge having a bit of a chat with the press about his time at the club.

A lot of things are standing out about what they both said, but the most telling part in some respects are of a comment from his father which sheds light on why Silva didn’t suit Scottish football:

Vídeos OneFootball

His father couldn’t understand why diving is bad. And neither could Silva.

The ex-Porto youth had a very bad habit of throwing himself to the turf, even when scoring was easier; we’d make a strong case he was possibly the worst and most prolific diver we’ve ever seen at Ibrox.

But his father couldn’t understand the problem:

“But when I was at the cup final recently, people found out I was his father and said to me, ‘Tell him not to dive.’ I know that’s just emotion and football – but I don’t understand it. It was a huge match but Rangers did NOTHING before Fabio won the penalty. He put them into the game yet afterwards everyone was against him. I don’t understand that. Whenever Fabio had the ball he always went at his opponent [Alistair Johnston] one v one and he provoked situations. He created another goal for the team and it was offside. But the supporters seemed to be against him afterwards.”

This is a huge problem in Hispanic football – South America, Spain and especially Portugal, diving and simulation are part of the game, it’s not regarded as cheating, it’s endorsed and it’s regarded as fooling the ‘stupid’ referees.

It earns kudos, because, we’re sorry, he dived 100% for that penalty at Ibrox, even if he got caught afterwards as he fell to the floor. All the Rangers sites trying to defend the penalty were blue-tinted to the extreme, but Silva was a complete diver all the way.

And his father could only support that and couldn’t understand why our fans wanted honesty and his son not to dive.

‘He put them into the game’ – this is Jorge Silva-speak for ‘his diving and simulation were great and worked against the referee and VAR, and he was the reason for the penalty’.

Absolutely true.

But that mentality won’t work in Scotland – we don’t like cheating, simulation, diving, you name it.

And Silva kept doing it.

He did it repeatedly on his friendly debut v Hamburg, which was already a bad sign, and he never let up after that.

But in the Hispanic/Latin football world, this is encouraged.

And that doesn’t work in Scotland.