As previously implied, there’s certainly a continuum to this sort of thing, and the actions of Nouha and the Watford cock are so far apart as to not even be worth comparing.
But even in the penalty box, there are different levels of bad behaviour. I certainly wouldn’t condone blatant diving, by which I mean falling over without being touched by an opponent with a view to conning the ref into awarding a pen, but I don’t think that’s what Dicko has done here. Rather, I’d call this taking advantage of a situation. There has been contact, albeit slight, and he’s decided to ask the ref whether he thinks it’s worth a free kick by going to ground. If the ref says no, then no one’s really going to make too much fuss; if he says yes, bonus. The rules might be in black and white, but how the ref interprets them is by no means so clear cut.
I don’t think this is any different in principle from a bowler asking for an lbw (pre-Hawkeye, of course) when he suspects the ball would have missed the stumps. Gamesmanship, at worst (which is fine), but not exactly cheating (which isn’t).
