The Hall of Shame: 10 players with the most bookings for diving ft. Costa, Suarez, Ronaldo… | OneFootball

Being booked for diving is football’s cardinal sin.

You’d have thought the introduction of VAR might have killed off the art of a good dive, but it’s just as prevalent as ever. And Real Madrid, Barcelona and Chelsea legends are among football’s most notorious actors.

With credit to Transfermarkt for compiling the data, here are the 10 players who have received the most yellow cards for diving.

10. Pedro – 6

“Pedro is a fantastic player but he is a born diver, an excellent swimmer, he dives into the pool just beautifully,” Jose Mourinho said of the former Barcelona and Chelsea forward following a 2023 Rome derby.

No further questions, your honour.

9. Alexis Sanchez – 6

The Chilean riled Tony Pulis during West Brom’s relatively routine 2-0 defeat to West Brom back in 2017.

A proper football man if there ever was one, Pulis accused Sanchez of “cheating” to win a free-kick in a dangerous position.

We can’t imagine Pulis sat down to watch Inter face Sampdoria a couple of years later, but if he had you imagine he’d have allowed himself a wry smile when Sanchez was shown a second yellow for simulation. The ultimate indignity.

8. Diego – 6

We’ve done some digging and the Diego with six yellow cards to his name is presumably the former Werder Bremen, Atletico Madrid and Juventus midfielder.

A player from Diego Simeone’s Atleti? Diving? You must be joking.

7. Cristiano Ronaldo – 6

Genuinely, we expected Ronaldo to be a few places higher. Not least because of his longevity, hundreds of games and countless opportunities to dive.

He always seemed to be diving in his days as a rough diamond at Manchester United, and it’s not something he completely knocked on the head in his prime years.

Of Ronaldo’s 122 yellow cards, just six have been for diving. We expect that proportion to be a bit higher than five per cent.

6. Carlos Aranda – 7

In amongst footballing royalty, these lists always throw up one or two names we have to look up on Wikipedia.

Aranda was a Spanish forward who graduated from Real Madrid’s academy at the turn of the century and spent the following 15 years turning out for no fewer than 13 different clubs in his home country, including no fewer than four separate stints with Numancia.

You know how your dad can’t abide Spanish football because it’s “full of players throwing themselves to the floor”? You can thank players like Carlos Aranda for that.

5. Keita Balde – 7

The journeyman Senegalese winger isn’t really a household name. We vaguely remember him turning out for Monza, Monaco and Inter in the mid-2010s.

Nowadays, he’s turning out for Monza in Serie B. Turns out even the Italian second tier uses VAR. Which isn’t ideal when your relationship with the penalty area has occasionally been… theatrical.

4. Sergio Aguero – 7

Who’d have thought it?

The likes of Wilfried Zaha, Jurgen Klinsmann and Bruno Fernandes have reputations as some of the Premier League’s most prolific divers. But none of them feature here, but Aguero does.

To be fair, it’s easy enough for the odd dive to get overshadowed and forgotten about when he scored 184 Premier League goals and a record 12 hat-tricks.

3. Dries Mertens – 7

Mertens? Really?

The Belgian never struck as a particularly snide or cheaty player. But the numbers don’t lie.

And really, he was lucky he didn’t end up with more for this absolute shocker. We’d have called it early teething problems with VAR, but it’s still this useless seven years later.

2. Diego Costa – 9

We’ve never been less surprised. This is like seeing Lionel Messi in a list of great goalscorers or Sergio Ramos in the most red-carded players.

In his Atletico and Chelsea prime, Costa was infamous for doing whatever necessary to win. Throwing himself to the floor to win a penalty? He’d call it street smarts. Defenders called it something else.

It would take a real sh*thouse to compete with Costa for diving, right? You’re not wrong…

1. Luis Suarez – 9

…Of course.

You might remember a minor furore over Suarez being prolific during his time in the Premier League. That ‘Latin temperament’, eh?

“Football is like that. Sometimes you do things on the field that later you think ‘why the hell did I do that?'” Suarez told Fox Sports Argentina at the time.

“I was accused of falling inside the box in a match, and it’s true I did it that time, because we were drawing against Stoke at home and we needed anything to win it.

“But after that, everybody jumped out to talk – the Stoke coach, and the Everton coach… I understood that the name Suarez sells (papers).”

Brendan Rodgers fumed at Suarez for admitting it, calling it “unacceptable” and stating: “[Diving] is not something we advocate. Our ethics are correct.”

Suarez famously got his own back at David Moyes in a Merseyside derby by diving in front of the Everton dugout. Moyes, to his credit, took it in good humour.