And the Academy Award for best flop goes to…

Soccer Players Conveniently 'Get Injured' When Their Team Benefits From It

By Ross Pomeroy, RealClearScience

Watching a soccer match can be very much like watching a sitcom with terrible acting. To gain an advantage and help their team win, players regularly engage in acrobatic, unsporting antics, which may include flamboyantly falling to draw a foul, feigning an injury to waste time, or crying out in pain while clutching their neck after being lightly tapped on the shoulder.

Savvy futbol fans, of course, aren't buying it. In Seattle, the 40,000+ Sounders faithful chant in unison, "Let him die!" when they deem the "injured" player to be a faker. Now, a new study published to the journal Frontiers in Psychology has confirmed what Seattle fans -- and all other soccer fans -- suspected: footballers are huge floppers.

Researchers based out of the National University Singapore and the University of Birmingham watched thirty Euro 2008 soccer matches, 90 English Premier League matches and 63 World Cup 2010 matches, charting injuries for each team over the duration of every match. The timing of injuries was divided into six periods: 0-15th minute, 16-30th minute, 31-45th minute (including first-half stoppage time), 46-60th minute, 61-75th minute and 76-90th minute (including second-half stoppage time). The injuries themselves were categorized based upon whether they would benefit or not benefit the team of the injured player. For example, if a player suffered an injury when his team was up by a goal, that would constitute a "benefit" injury, as it would slow the game down and give his teammates a break.

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