Football
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Burnley manager Sean Dyche calls FA's diving rule 'very weak'

Sean Dyche has labelled the Football Association's recently-introduced rule on diving "very weak'' and has suggested there is an apathy to kicking it out of football.

Dyche's Burnley felt aggrieved last weekend when Manchester City's Bernardo Silva won a penalty from a challenge with Clarets goalkeeper Nick Pope that set City on their way to a 3-0 victory.

Although there was contact from Pope on Silva's foot, Dyche felt the Portuguese forward made the most of it by theatrically falling to the Etihad Stadium floor.

The FA brought in a regulation at the start of this season aimed at combating "successful deception of a match official'', which allowed the governing body to retrospectively punish diving with a two-game suspension if a three-man panel agreed on an offence having reviewed video evidence.

However, with the FA announcing on Monday that Silva would not be the first Premier League player to be sanctioned, Dyche has queried both the rule and the appetite to stamp out diving.

"It has to be looked at for the moral good of the game,'' the Clarets boss said.

"Thirteen stone, athletic, six-foot international footballers get the tiniest touch on their leg and go down? Do me a favour. That's enough to make you go down?

"Kids copy professional players, they'll fall over as well. [You] can't have kids cheating, you wouldn't have them cheating at school.

"Without being too pure, if our lads did that, they'd get a little reminder.

"But no one cares, I can't find anyone who's that bothered about it, managers, the FA have a very weak rule that covers it but doesn't cover it, the powers that be don't seem to be bothered and it goes out to billions of people around the world.

"Fans used to care, remember when [Didier] Drogba first came over and there was uproar?

"Fans, pundits, managers questioning whether they need to have a word. Then he became the fantastic player he was, but in the initial stage there was uproar, and now you never hear it. Bizarre.''

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