With 24 minutes left and his team trailing Colombia 1–0 in their critical World Cup Group C match, super substitute Didier Drogba needed to produce some magic. He delivered—though not in the way that Ivory Coast fans might have hoped—with this stupendous dive of the day.
We score dive of the day on three categories: level of actual contact (1 if there’s no contact at all, 10 for a huge collision), level of simulated contact (1 for a stoic response, 10 for acting like you’ve been shot), and dive duration.
Level of actual contact: 5
Level of simulated contact: 10
Dive duration: 5 seconds
Drogba made the absolute most of Abel Aguilar’s lightest of arm tugs, beating the defender, seeing that the play was about to fizzle out anyway, and then falling to his side. Drogba was well out of reach of Aguilar and the Colombian was already on the ground when the former Chelsea striker fell entirely on his own accord. This maybe should have been a foul, but Drogba definitely should have stayed up.
