“I’m covering my seventh World Cup, and love the event, but I can understand if Americans who catch a glimpse of soccer are turned off by the weasel code in which players fake grievous, perhaps even mortal, injury.”
George Vescey, The New York Times, who adds:
I’m not a big fan of American football — I get bored between downs — but I admit that the American game does not reward a player for rolling on the turf like a man possessed by evil spirits in a science-fiction flick. That’s downright unmanly, by our standards. Jim Brown used to lope stoically back to the huddle after every play because he never wanted to show pain. “You can’t hurt me,” was his attitude.