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Portugal

Bye England for real now

Sports

Portugal beat England after a penalty shootout, but not until after the ref denied England a penalty and then let them retake an already converted penalty during the shootout. Well done FIFA. You've ruined football once and for ever.

Bye England

Sports

I ignored my vows and am watching World Cup again. And what do I see during England-Portugal? The ref sending off Rooney without any good reason. All I hear about this World Cup is how Germany has changed so much, but to be honest all I see is a bunch of totalitarian refs and their personal fetishes. In fact I'd like to state that this World Cup is in fact the worst thing to come out me Germany since the Nazis.

Update: I have withdrawn my criticism of the red card. I do maintain however that the qualify of referees at this World Cup has been disgraceful.

Ohne Holland..

Sports

Ohne Holland fahren wir zum Viertelfinal. The Dutch lost 1-0 against Portugal, itself and the referee.

Officially, Holland lost against Portugal. Between the lines, Holland mainly lost to itself. The team had most of the possesion and over a double dozen of goal opportunities, but failed to convert. That's the most important thing to learn from this match. Those who had criticism of coach Van Basten's decision to keep Klaas-Jan Huntelaar have not been proven wrong. The team was far better than Portugal, but if you are unable to actually score you do not deserve to win.

But more was going on. Not only did we already witness a World Cup where referee Graham Poll gave a single player got three yellow cards in one match, tonight's referee decided to steal even more thunder: he caused three new FIFA World Cup records:

Most Red Cards (Game): 4 (2 each) in Portugal v Netherlands, 25 June 2006
Most Yellow Cards Against One Team: 9 (Portugal), 2006
Most Yellow cards (match): 16 - Portugal v Netherlands, 25 June 2006, and 16 - Cameroon v Germany, June 11 2002

He gave sixteen yellow cards (nine of which for Portugal) and four red cards (all as a result of two yellow). He clearly lost control of the match (as did the teams). Maybe he should have given Holland a penalty when they deserved one, or he could have sent off one or two Portuguese halfway the first half, when fair play became a lost concept. Unfortunately Holland followed suit with the aggression, but there wasn't really a choice without proper arbitration.

I maintain that Holland was simply not capable of converting brilliant play into goals and that this is the primary reason for dropping out so soon. But I must note that the quality of referees at this World Cup has been so bad that I would prefer to have those crazy referees from tiny countries back. For some complete unknown from Swaziland I can have sympathy. For so-called professionals not so much. I'm glad FIFA agrees with me:

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said the referee could have been yellow-carded himself after sending off four players and handing out bookings to eight others in Portugal's World Cup 1-0 win over the Netherlands.

"It was a great show with intervention by the referee that was not consistent and (had) lack of fair play by some players."

Oh well. Huntelaar helped us to the Under-21 European Cup, so maybe he'll be the one who can take us to the European Cup in 2008.

© Copyright 1995-2008 Robert John Kaper. All rights reserved.

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