Neymar's Dives

About

Neymar's Dives refer to jokes about Brazilian footballer Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior dramatically falling down in an attempt to win a foul call in several major games, including once while tussling with Uruguay defender Walter Gargano during the semi-final match of 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and again at the 2018 World Cup.

Origin

On June 26th, 2013, the FIFA Confederations Cup semi-final match between Brazil and Uruguay took place at the Mineirão stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In the 86th minute, score of 1 – 1, Neymar, a 21-year-old rising star who had recently signed with Spain's renowned FC Barcelona, assisted the tie-breaker with a corner kick which was then headed into the goal by Paulinho. Then in the 90th minute, with only overtime left in the game, Neymar got in a scuffle with Uruguay defender Walter Gargano, at which point he suddenly took a dive to feign a foul (edited footage shown below).

Neymar developed a reputation for diving from other players thanks to that game^[1][3][6] and others.

Spread

After the moment, it was parodied in multiple GIFs which added photoshops showing possible reasons Neymar reacted so exaggeratedly (examples shown below). These jokes were covered by Bleacher Report.^[5]

2018 World Cup

At the 2018 World Cup, Neymar was again seen making arguably disproportionate reactions to fouls against him, particularly in Brazil's match against Costa Rica (shown below).

This was joked about by soccer fans on social media. On Reddit, a post making fun of Neymar's dives calling them "highlights" gained over 540 points on /r/funny (shown below, left). Twitter users posted GIFs meant to represent Neymar diving; a popular example posted by @goal used a scene from Arrested Development to make the joke, gaining over 380 retweets and 500 likes (shown below, right).

External References