> This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team.
Nitpick, there are two kinds of "flopping" in sports, which you can both observe e.g. in soccer.
One is to simulate a made-up foul as you say, basically trying to mislead the referee into giving an unjustified penalty. This is clearly illegal and constitutes a foul itself.
However, often players flop to highlight fouls that actually happened but were so subtle or hard to see that the referee missed them.
The results are still ridiculous - Ronaldo rolling in pain on the grass because the other player had briefly pulled his jersey - but the greater strategy here is valid: If small, subtle fouls went unpunished, they'd be an easy way to gain an unfair advantage for your team. So the game would very quickly turn into a contest of how to hide fouls best from the referee. By highlighting fouls to a ridiculous degree, players are counteracting this.
>> If small, subtle fouls went unpunished, they'd be an easy way to gain an unfair advantage for your team. So the game would very quickly turn into a contest of how to hide fouls best from the referee.
Only in soccer, and even then only with particular types of players... I don't know how to describe them without using any of these words...
Nitpick, there are two kinds of "flopping" in sports, which you can both observe e.g. in soccer.
One is to simulate a made-up foul as you say, basically trying to mislead the referee into giving an unjustified penalty. This is clearly illegal and constitutes a foul itself.
However, often players flop to highlight fouls that actually happened but were so subtle or hard to see that the referee missed them.
The results are still ridiculous - Ronaldo rolling in pain on the grass because the other player had briefly pulled his jersey - but the greater strategy here is valid: If small, subtle fouls went unpunished, they'd be an easy way to gain an unfair advantage for your team. So the game would very quickly turn into a contest of how to hide fouls best from the referee. By highlighting fouls to a ridiculous degree, players are counteracting this.