The rules do have an answer for your diving example - they the yellow and red cards. Those are given when players break the rules, ie when they cheat. That Suarez got a red card is literal proof that he cheated.

As for your second point, well that’s how people felt about things like goal-line technology and VAR (I realise the latter isn’t the most popular atm). The penalty goals concept should only be in clear instances where a goal would have categorically been scored if the opposing player didn’t cheat (ie the Suarez incident), not with a basic foul in the penalty area. You are removing the incentive to cheat. That is hardly going to ‘kill football’. Moot point anyway as it’s not exactly an idea that has popular traction. Kinda why I’m left hoping Ghana can return the favour in the game tomorrow.

It's definitely in 'kill football' territory for me, I view it the same as when Americans wanted goals from outside the box to be worth 2. A goal is a goal, either the ball crossed the line or it didn't, period.

It's also for exactly that reason that I've never seen a single person anywhere ever say they were against goal-line technology. It has been used for almost a decade now and I've never seen anyone complain about it, it's been effective, objective, and fast. That's the issue with VAR: it rarely is ever fast, and it's subjective as fuck. It was already pretty unpopular over the past few years in European competitions, yet somehow FIFA made it a million times worse in this World Cup. I'm still in favor of VAR existing, but it has to be used only when absolutely necessary, not these nonsense offsides like the one they gave against Croatia today.

Aging already.

What the hell is going on in Group E? Will be absolutely unbelievable if it stays like this!

Japan were definitely watching Blue Lock at half time.

Well it did change. Shame. But now Germany need a Spain goal to go through, but Spain don’t really need to chase a goal for anything bar personal pride - to top the group and avoid defeat. It also gets them on arguably the seemingly easier side of the knockout draw and avoid a potential quarter-final against Brazil.

Germany are out! Could they spitefully concede 3 in the next 2 minutes to knock Spain out as well?

You guys were saying about Spain? Yeah, Argentina-Brazil in the semis.

EDIT: And France-Spain in the other one. You heard it here first.

Felt like I was watching an anime there.

If only Costa Rica held on to the lead, but, I'll take it. Was crazy enough as is.

Verdict for Group F:

The next highly regarded European team, Belgium, got eliminated in the group stage. This was the most watchable 0-0 at this WC, but it didn't have to be, if only Lukaku had remembered how to score goals. Just like Denmark in group D, Belgium scored only one goal in three games. They got away with a lucky win against Canada, were harmless against Morocco and then inefficient against Croatia. This makes it hard to feel bad for them.

Morocco winning the group was the biggest surprise of the WC up until that point. This is the result of strong play on their own and performances of Belgium and Croatia that fell far short of expectations, both in general play and goals scored. Canada is the second team after Qatar to go out with 0 points and they'll also be the last to do so.

11 goals scored, including two 0-0 games. Weak.

...

Verdict for Group E:

After the first halves of each final game it looked like an almost sure thing that Spain and Germany would advance, but then things got turned upside down quickly. While Germany fought back after trailing against Costa Rica, Spain was more or less content with a close loss; after all, the actual period of Spain sitting at #3 lasted only about one minute. On one hand it was a rather shameful advance in the round of 16 by Spain, but on the other hand the Germans go home, so it's not all bad.

Japan remains a bag of surprise where you never know what you'll get. Their prize is a match against Croatia while a progressively worse Spain gets the seemingly easier game against Morocco and the easiest path to the semifinals in general. Costa Rica was a puzzling participant where one had to wonder how they even made it to the WC, but they were oddly competitive in their final game after getting a perplexing win against Japan before.

22 goals scored combined with the craziest results and ups and downs. Amazing.

...

Performance per continent:

North America reaches a final result of 25% which looks bad on the surface, but Mexico fell only one goal short of making it to the round of 16.

Africa: 2/3 - 67%
Asia: 2/5 - 40%
Europe: 6/10 - 60%
North America: 1/4 - 25%
South America: 1/2 - 50%