Real Salt Lake is one of the top teams in MLS, and might have been in their way to another victory against struggling San Jose, but when Alvaro Saborio took a dive in the penalty area, earning a PK and a red card for San Jose's Bobby Burling, the matches outcome was all but decided.
RSL took full advantage of the sequence, with Saborio converting the penalty as Real Salt Lake rolled to a 4-0 victory at Rio Tinto Stadium on Saturday night.
The controversial dive had San Jose players fuming and even RSL fans unhappy with their own player. Tempers even boiled o
Here are the match highlights, where you can see the Saborio dive at 2:36 and 3:36.
What did you think of the match? Think Saborio should be suspended? Surprised to see an RSL player take a dive?
Share your thoughts below.
Why exactly would suspension be in order? I am all for ending diving and if Sabo is suspended they better suspend every play similar that occurs in the league.
Even to the “stars” like Divies.
As long as we are talking suspensions, how many games should you suspend a team like San Jose for quitting? Rolling over and just taking it? All round laying down after one bad call?
Just curious.
The MLS is the worst on equally punishing players! (If they give Sabo more then a $1000.00 dollar fine and NO suspension, like Davies got, as your hinting at SBI)then maybe they should go back and give Mondaini an 11 game suspension for the tackle on Morales? Just to step up the punishment on bad tackles? You know, since Mullan got a well deserved 10 games, and Chivas gets 4??? The MLS needs firm preset guidelines, until then they are minor league!
Suspend the ref and fine Saborio.
– RSL fan
(full disclosure)
The best part was the ref giving the red to the wrong player at first. What game was he watching?? I hope that ref worked his last MLS game.
Not only was Davies fined. He also now no longer gets anything close to the benefit of the doubt with refs. I say the action was pretty effective.
Wow, thats pretty exteme. Why can’t people deal with the fact that diving is a definitive part of the modern game. Adapt to it.
Saborio has been having a bad year for both club and country, perhaps he was looking for an edge to snap out of some bad form.
Sabo needs to be suspended and fined. This leaves SJ in a horrible position next week without a single center back (the rest out on injury). So not only did Sabo put the game in disrepute and blow SJ’s goal differential (we all knew they would win but doubt it would have been 4-0 instead probably 2-0.) But DC will be blessed by three Quakes sitting out due to this match (Ring, Burling, & Busch).
It will be interesting to see if Kreis man’s up and isn’t a hypocrite and punishes Sabo. If he was a good man he would also appeal to the MLS Disciplinary committee to get Bobby Burling un-suspended for this Saturday. But that won’t happen.
RSL really lost my respect last night.
Rsl fan here, here is my perspective.
If the rsl fans take the anger over Davies and the feeling that we were ‘owed one’ out of the equation and if the supported of other clubs take your hate for rsl and or saborio and even cruddy refs and diving out of the equation we can look at this objectively.
Davies was fined for his dive and the league set out the precident that future dives would be met with increasing punishment. Sabo should receive an incremental punishment, say 5k and or 1 game. Then let future divers beware, because it’ll definitely happen again soon.
But to try and call for any more than that AT THIS TIME is irrational. They just started the policy for this, why jump to an extreme so quickly? Why then not just start with Davies? What would the next level of punishment be? A gradual increase is the only way to make it fair from team to team, diver to diver. Any extreme jump is unfair to that one team.
No amount of crying is going to give San Jose any points for last night, the same way rsl will not get the 2 points Davies stole back. A consise and consistent policy dealing with divers is the only was out of this mess.
The class thing would be for rsl to suspend sabo themselves and put the onus on the league and the rest of the teams to follow suit.
I watched it on MDL and those weren’t RSL’s announcers!!!
Rsl fan here, those were not rsl commentators.
If I was Garber, I would suspend players every single time for diving. And I don’t mean embellishment. If you’ve been fouled, and you go down easy, then fair play. There will always be room for interpretation with regard to going down easy. But simulating a foul where there is literally no contact requires a suspension.
First no-contact dive: 3 MLS games
All subsequent no-contact dives: 10 MLS games
Harsh, I know. But I bet players stop diving in our league.
Nobody mentions that Ned Grabavoy held his face and tried to buy a red card when Brad Ring turned around and accidental hit him in the chest. That’s two flops from RSL in the space of 11 seconds.
Interesting
DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!!! Please suspend him. Sabo dives and flops all the time.
This sort of trash has to be dealth with. He’s a great player no doubt, but this crap has to go. Changed the whole game.
Biggest dive you’ve ever seen? Check last month when Divies went down though the defender was a foot away
Those were Real’s piss poor announcers actually. They have a habit of always talking RSL down
The announcers doing the replay on MLS’ webite at first thought Saborio was going to get called for a dive. I thought they were SJ’s announcers.
I meant “even if the assistant referee saw it correctly…”
i should have just said why not yellow and straight to red?
In this case I would suspend the referee because he pulled a red card out even before consulting his assistant who appeared to have a better angle. His assistant even went over to talk to the ref but the ref couldn’t wait and had to look all tough and pull his red out. Even if the referee saw it correctly what difference does it make when a card was already pulled and the spot was pointed to?
Can the league not afford to get all of the refs fox soccer and gol TV so they can watch games in other parts of the world and see how a game should be handled by the referee.
big deal, thats what adds flavor to the sport. gets the fans, writers, players, coaches, league officials talking. plus, real salt lake dominated.
Why in SJ, RSL already beat them there…
“Classy club, but even Kreis said maybe it was a lucky make up call for some terrible calls earlier in the year…”
Yeah, like when RSL was gifted with a home win over the Rapids though anybody could see Espindola was off on the only goal of the game.
Oh, wait…
Even the SJ announcers had no problem with the call at first. They were upset that the ref gave the wrong guy the card. They changed their stance once they saw the replay.
I also thought it was a foul until seeing a replay.
I have no doubt Jason Kreis will talk to Saborio in private but he will not call him out in public nor suspend him.
Any fine MLS wants to hand out to Saborio is okay with me, but no suspension is required.
u have to be trolling
cute rationalization by Kreis
Saborio dive mars RSL blowout win over San Jose….not really,we(quakes) are a BAD team w/ a bad coach and a front office that can care less. we would of gotten beat regardless. did anyone see the stat before the pk call?!…it was 18%(Q’s) to 72%! for rsl. it was only a matter of time….tired of yallop happy w/ all the ties we’re getting. he needs to GO!!!
Terrible call but tough to see in live action. When I saw it live on tv I thought for sure he got taken down. Then after several replays I could see he wasn’t hardly touched. Tough call to make live when the players are at full sprint. I’m an RSL fan and it is disappointing to see this for any player including my own. I hate to see us win that way.
Make up call for terrible calls earlier in the year??? I guess the Galaxy have the supporters shield locked up…they are due several make up calls.
Davies was fined and publicly called out by the league for his dive. That’s not “unpunished,” though it might not be as harsh as you’d like. In the same statement, they said that future dives would be punished more harshly, with fines and/or suspensions. Saborio had the benefit of hearing this and dove anyway – he’s got nobody to blame but himself for whatever’s coming from the league office.
Suspend the officials, not the player. At first I thought justice would be served with a “neverinamillionyears” replay, but then I remembered the Quakes v Galaxy match, so I chalk it up to Karma.
Agudelo got a yellow for a dive yesterday. Does he get suspended also?
They left that warning out there about future dives possibly being punished harder than Davies was, so they did leave themselves room to suspend him. What I would rather see happen is MLS clarify their position on diving. They should come out and either say ‘diving is subject to suspension’ or it’s not.
Not that it should be mandatory, but we shouldn’t have to be guessing at punishments.
*edit*
What I would do if I was in charge would be to give the diver the punishment the referee awarded for the dive.
That was the biggest dive I have ever seen. But it is the ref who should be suspended. That is an atrocious job and he has no place in our league. For Saborio, he deserves a fine and a yellow (what he should have got in the game). Diving isn’t a suspendable offense for anyone other than the ref.
Very bad call. Regardless, Busch acted like a complete buffoon. I would feel worse if San Jose would have fought more. They practically gave up after the penalty.
Of course they did…after the most blatant dive of all (Davies against Wingert) went unpunished. It seems like they watched the video said “Crap we can’t punish a Davies…just look at all he has been through” and then made this statement without touching the dive that set it all off.
Live in the stadium it looked like a penalty
And why would it be justified this time when it has happened numerous times before (including SJ players) and the league has never even blinked? If anything further happens it just shows that the MLS is ok picking an choosing who they suspend and who they overturn and not in a consistent manner. As an RSL fan I feel like crap that we beat SJ in this way and would be ok if the team suspends Saborio…but the MLS should do nothing as they have done nothing in the past.
The league already said future dives may receive harsher punishment. Some how I don’t think the league will miss you.
Ok, so no one touched him, complete dive. How did they determine that was a red card? Refs are starting to make up things that they saw just to justify themselves. At least suspend him for the next game.
Part of the game. You do what you can to get an advantage. Some times you eat the bar and some times the bar eats you. If you don’t want them to dive than take away all incentives to win.
As an RSL fan I would be ok with the team giving him a suspension but if the MLS suspends him I swear to everything holy I am done with this league. If Davies has never been touched for his shameful dives and then they suspend Saborio for his awful dive it just shows how minnow this league is. Yes it was a dive, yes as a fan I was pissed (especially considering he probably could have scored had he stayed on his feet), but MLS has already shown that diving is ok and no punishment will be handed out (as well as no card being overturned for incorrect calls). Also last night I was thinking that if the ref was closer he might have got the call right why hasn’t the MLS tried going with 2 center refs…one per each side of the field? That would cut down on blown calls and cards. Is it FIFA that wouldn’t allow it or just MLS?
The way to snuff this out would be to replay the game in San Jose, suspend Saborio for 3 games, and fine him.
Yes, diving sucks and the PK should not have been given. However:
1. If it weren’t for the San Jose midfielders diving any time Beckerman, Grabavoy, or Johnson got with 5 feet of them, San Jose would have had NO possession in the game.
2. The linesman in the 1st half kept San Jose in the game with multiple blown offsides calls that kept Saborio from being one on one with Busch.
It looked pretty blatant to me.
Didn’t the league say they might punish future diving more harshly?
Yeah suspension would be extreme; this would be his “1st” offense, so he wouldn’t get more than a fine this time.
Maybe its just me but I didn’t think it looked at bad as davies dive anyway……. that could be better skill at flopping though.
Why would Sabo get suspended when Davies wasn’t?
(SBI-Because the league stated pretty clearly that punishment for dives that influenced the outcome of games would begin being punished at even greater rates, including potential suspensions. League was pretty clear, we’ll see if they stand up to that. Not saying I think a dive should result in a suspension but the league has created the possibility.)
Classy club, but even Kreis said maybe it was a lucky make up call for some terrible calls earlier in the year. Suspension for sure. It has to be made clear that these type of actions are strictly forbidden.
Where was the sideline judge on this. HOw could he miss both.