July 3, 2000 is the day it all went downhill.
Prior to this date, nobody dived in the Premier League but, since then, it’s turned into a modern phenomenon.
That’s not according to us. It’s according to former Manchester City full-back Danny Mills who has claimed that Arsenal legend Robert Pires is to blame for the simulation epidemic that’s currently on display in England.
Mills and Pires had a notoriously strained relationship on the pitch and Mills believes the Frenchman, who signed for the Gunners from Marseille around the turn of the millennium, brought the culture of going down easy with him.
‘It is true that there was no love lost between me and Pires,’ Mills wrote in The Times. ‘I spent many years playing against him as a right back, for Leeds United and Manchester City, and we had what might be called a fractious relationship.
‘I will always remember him as the player who, in my view, really brought diving into the English game; his habit of throwing himself to the ground without any provocation always infuriated me.’
Does he have a point?
