Richarlison has escaped punishment for his alleged dive in Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat to Watford on Saturday.
The Watford winger went down very easily, under almost no contact from Hector Bellerín, but nonetheless a penalty was awarded and Watford equalised.
Richarlison’s incident had been referred to the simulation panel, but they found him not guilty of diving.
Richarlison penalty incident v Arsenal WAS referred to the FA's new diving panel but he has been cleared of simulation.
— Martyn Ziegler (@martynziegler) October 16, 2017
Contrary to what the Daily Mail is reporting, this doesn’t mean they ruled that a penalty was the correct decision. That’s a different thing entirely.
It’s perfectly possible for the referee to not give a penalty, but also not to award a yellow for diving. If he feels that Richarlison exaggerated the contact, but didn’t completely simulate it, that’s presumably exactly what he’d do.
Furthermore, the panel can only award a retrospective ban when there is a clear case of “no contact”. If there is any contact at all, the panel can’t act, reports the Guardian.
In the end, it doesn’t really make any difference to the Gunners anyway. It’s not as if the result of the panel would be to deduct two points from Watford and award one to Arsenal.
The ‘best case’ scenario would have been a ban for Richarlison. Honestly, I’d rather he was available, so he can dive against Chelsea next week as well.