Pulis is a fool if he thinks only foreign players are the fall guys

Updated: 05:33 EST, 20 January 2009

Tony Pulis is a manager who tells his Stoke team to play the ball long and get in the faces of opponents, so sophistication may be too much to expect.

But to claim all foreign players are divers because that is ‘their culture’  is so far below a basic view of the game it must be challenged.

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Fall guy: Steven Gerrard goes down under the challenge by Blackburn keeper Brad Friedel

He spoke out after an incident involving Chelsea’s Michael Ballack, a German, but the implication was that every country apart from England is full of players  falling over in the lightest of winds.

Has he never watched Steven Gerrard or Michael Owen? Did he not see Wayne   Rooney’s embarrassing tumble this season?

Pulis is deluding himself if he thinks diving is a foreign problem and stupid if he really believes football in every country outside the UK is the same.