The Law 12 wording

Simulation is listed under unsporting behaviour. The Laws describe it as attempting to deceive the referee by feigning injury or pretending to have been fouled. The sanction is a yellow card.

Two things matter:

1. Deception — the action must be designed to win a decision the player did not earn
2. Reaction to the referee — players who fall and immediately rise without appealing are usually not booked

A genuine stumble where the player gets up and plays on is not simulation. A theatrical collapse with arms raised in appeal is.

Contact does not save the dive

This is the part players try to argue and the Laws explicitly reject. Simulation can be cautioned even when contact happened, if the fall was clearly disproportionate to the contact.

The referee asks: did the contact cause the fall, or did the player choose to fall after feeling minimal contact?

If the second answer is yes, that is simulation — yellow card — even if the opponent's foot brushed the player's shin on the way down.

VAR and simulation

VAR can review penalty decisions. If the referee awards a penalty and replay shows simulation, VAR can recommend:

• Overturning the penalty — original decision reversed
• Yellow card to the simulator — recorded as a caution

This is one of the cleanest VAR interventions because the visual evidence is usually clear. A player who falls without contact, or whose fall predates the contact, is hard to defend on replay.

Self-trips and "going down looking for it"

Some of the most-debated simulation calls are players who clip their own boot or anticipate contact that never comes. Both are simulation:

• Self-trip — the fall is caused by the player's own foot, not the opponent
• Anticipation — the player begins falling before any contact happens

Both deceive the referee, both earn a yellow.

What is not simulation

• A player who gets up immediately and plays on after being clipped — no appeal, no deception
• A player who falls awkwardly because their balance was disrupted by legitimate contact
• A player who exaggerates pain on a real injury to slow play — that may be time-wasting (delaying the restart), not simulation

Each of those has a different Law 12 path or none at all. Simulation is specifically about pretending a foul happened.