hi! Just a heads-up that this sub has a "20-year rule", which forbids the discussion of current events. Therefore, if "faking injuries" was not common before 1994, you won't get answers here. It might be an idea to x-post this question to /r/soccer.

It is difficult to answer your question without either providing my own views and/or breaching the 20 year rule so I will try to provide some insight into the development of the game and how certain changes have encouraged some of the behavior we see today along with some links.

Diving or faking injuries is relatively new to the game. Substitutions were only introduced in 1958, before this if you were injured you had to either carry on playing as best as your injury would allow or leave the game thereby resulting in your team being 1 player short for the remainder.

During the 1956 F.A. Cup Final the Manchester City goalkeeper, Bert Trautmann broke his neck with 15 minutes left to play. With no substitutes he continued to play on, Bert Trautmann 56 F.A. Cup Final

here are some key dates to rule changes Major rule changes

Why do players dive or fake injuries? The 2 main reasons are to see an opposing player receive a yellow card (caution) or a red card (sending off), 2 yellow cards for the same player in the same game would mean a player is also sent off. And also to waste time or break up the flow off the game and allow your team a breather.

This link is to the minutes of the F.A. annual meetings, contained within are the new and amended rules for every year since 1886. Meeting Minutes

Time wasting became a bigger and bigger problem in the late 80’s, with 5, 10 or even 15 minutes to play teams would simply pass the ball around and try not to lose possession without making any attempt to attach the opposing teams goal if they were winning or drawing.

Particularly useful was for them to pass the ball back to the goalkeeper who could then pick up the ball and hold onto it before simply rolling it out to his team mate, and the process would be repeated.

To prevent this in 1992 saw the introduction of the no back pass rule, which stated that the goalkeeper could not pick up the ball if a player passed it to him with his feet…..what happened???

Players simply flicked the ball up and headed the ball back. So in 1993 to deliberately do this was made an offence.

So now with no way to pass the ball back to the keeper wasting time became more difficult. However, pretending to be fouled or injured would still result in stopping the game and allow your team to take a breather and also disrupt the flow of the game.

Faking injuries, or the seriousness of fouls is something that started long ago, however certain changes such as making the tackle from behind a serious foul play offence (and a red card) provided the opportunity for players to play act when such a tackle occurred with the hope of having the opposing player sent off.

In addition to this in 1991 a rule was introduced that stated if a player fouled an opposing player who was had an obvious goal scoring opportunity this would result in a red card. Now if this offence took place in the penalty area not only was the offending player sent off but the other team were awarded a penalty. This again encouraged diving and faking injury.

Diving on its own has become a bigger and bigger problem in the past 10 years, although it has been around longer.

Hope the mods will forgive me this upto date statement, however I believe it adds to the ongoing fight the officials have with the laws of the game and continue to have to amend them, as they have for the past 100+ years.

To attempt to stop players faking injury the current rule (introduced before the 1994 world cup i believe but cannot find the exact date) states players who are injured (real or fake) cannot receive medical treatment on the pitch, instead the game is stopped, the player removed and the game continues until the player has been treated and the referee allows him to re-enter the pitch.

So faking an injury will result in your team being a player short for a while, which should at least be a small deterrent. Even this rule is under review as if a player is fouled and genuinely injured he must still leave the pitch resulting in the offending team having a 1 player advantage.

Edit: to clarify a link