Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Later, losers.


I've always hated Cristiano Ronaldo. Anyone who plays for Manchester United falls into that category but Ronaldo carved out his own private niche in my world of least-favorite athletes. As my friend Grant described him, "he's all sizzle and no steak." That was certainly the case during his first couple of years at Old Trafford when his multiple step-overs followed by crosses to nobody were easy to ridicule. But lately he's started to score goals, look up and find teammates, and become a vastly improved player. Too bad he's become the heir to Felipo Inzaghi's Diving Twat throne.

Ronaldo's exhibition of theatrics yesterday was an absolute disgrace. I am flabbergasted that he has the nerve to claim that he should have received a penalty when he simply threw himself to the ground. Ronaldo, his comrade Helder Postiga, and various other Ports were dropping like flies in attempts to con the ref. Why no yellow cards for the diving? Should FIFA not simply review the tape of the match and discipline players found to be at fault? That seems like a relatively easy solution to cutting down the acting.

I liked Carvalho's admission that he made contact with Henry but that the ref "could have played advantage." How can you play advantage if you've just taken out the offensive player and kept him from a clear goal-scoring opportunity!?

This is sad because I like Portugal. I have good pals in Lisbon. I've gone to see Sporting play. I went there on my honeymoon! But no way could I get behind these clowns. Seeing Scolari and his whole bench infuriated after every single call was too much. Good riddance.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi geoff.
couldn't agree with you more.
portugal didn't show anything in this cup. which is a shame. we got some good players, a lot of not-so-good players, no bench, no strikers, and extra team spirit. scolari is a fraud and i hope he leave. even if he has the entire country, and i mean e-n-t-i-r-e country, raving him.
everytime i saw a dive i got all red with shame. why the fuck do they do that? i don't know. i really don't know. of course, it became exagerated now, as other teams do that too (italy kicked out australia with a dive, remember?), but we need to change this quickly. as far as i remember, i don't rememberseeing these theatrics in the eurocup 2 years ago. why? because we were playing football instead.
regards from lisbon, mister.
pedro

The Editor said...

Well, I'm glad you agree, Pedro from Lisboa. The theatrics were far fewer in 2004. I think it has to do with the FIFA rules. The refs started calling everything so the players started diving at everything to get calls.

And why doesn't Portugal have any strikers??

Anonymous said...

that's a jolly good question.
creative teams and creative football don't embrace that position: we like to dribble endlessly and that is what every player likes to do. "just" scoring the goal is too easy. it's a paradox, i know, but it's more exciting for the kids and young players to dribble and make a good assitance to a striker.
even with brasil you don't see too many strikers, but we have a problem indeed: if i was scolari and i could choose a striker... i would be in trouble. and, honestly, Pauleta was the first born striker in years... the maine problem is that... he's no good. our only way is to grab rob maakay, since basten doesn't want him... ;-)

and tomorrow... the losers match. how much boring can it go?

still waiting for a Post about the states team... what went wrong?