Soccer boot ruined in dive (8)
I believe the answer is:
football
'soccer' is the definition.
(I know that soccer can be written as football)
'boot ruined in dive' is the wordplay.
'ruined' indicates an anagram.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'dive' becomes 'fall' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'boot' is an anagram of 'ootb'.
'ootb' put into 'fall' is 'FOOTBALL'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for football that I've seen before include "Team sport" , "Lob aloft (anag)" , "Liverpool or Everton, for example" , "The beautiful game, some say" , "controversial issue" .)