Leeds United may have beaten Southampton 2-0 on Tuesday evening, but the big talking point after the game was the referee’s failure to award the Whites with a penalty after Patrick Bamford collided with Alex McCarthy.
Indeed, the contentious moment saw Bamford impeded by the goalkeeper when he was one on one, but the fact that he didn’t go down meant that he wasn’t awarded a spot-kick.
As you can imagine, Bamford wasn’t best pleased about this, and he protested to the referee, appearing to say ‘so I have to dive?’ after the decision wasn’t given.
Bamford’s refusal to go down is commendable, we hear every week from old-school pundits and managers that modern footballers are too keen to go to ground and that strikers, in particular buy decisions, so it was good to see Bamford refusing to take the easy route.
Interestingly, Bamford didn’t always shy away from diving when the opportunity presented itself.
Indeed, every Leeds fan will remember the Whites’ infamous clash with Aston Villa back in 2019 where after Mateusz Klich’s controversial goal, Bamford got Anwar El Ghazi sent off after a bit of play-acting.
Alan Shearer famously labelled the striker a ‘disgrace’ after the incident, but it seems as though the striker has evolved to be a player who isn’t keen on diving, as shown by the incident against Southampton.
Perhaps the backlash he got from the Aston Villa incident prompted this change, or maybe the fact that he’s been working closely with FIFA Fair Play Award winner Marcelo Bielsa has seen him change his ways.
One thing is for sure, Bamford has evolved from the player who was being handed retrospective bans for successfully deceiving match officials back in 2019 to a player who refuses to dive, even when he probably would have benefitted from it.
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