This afternoon, I went to the hospital to visit with my grandfather and watch the Portugal vs. Netherlands game with him. I swear he’s hanging on as long as Portugal is in the tournament.
At any rate, it was the first game of this World Cup that I watched from beginning to end. I had seen large portions of other games, including Argentina vs. Mexico and Brazil vs. Australia, but never from whistle to whistle.
Admittedly, I’m not the most avid soccer fan, and really, I only watch during the World Cup or Euro Cup, and only if I have a rooting interest. Most years, the rooting interest is Brazil since Portugal seldom make it past the first round. In fact, I don’t think they’ve made it to the second round since 1966.
This year however, the Portuguese side have shown that they can play with the big boys. They have a very strong team on paper. They went through the first round undefeated and today they faced their first do-or-die game against the Dutch.
They won, but did so with little honour in my opinion. I actually felt ashamed of their performance. The referee made the mistake of doling out a yellow card on a questionable call early in the game and that basically gave the players on both sides the green light to begin diving in the hopes that a player from the other team would get booted from the game. There were more acting performances than there were athletic.
Portugal scored on a wicked shot by Maniche in the first half, but overall, they were outplayed. The Dutch had the edge in ball possession and scoring chances but they just couldn’t find the back of the net. Things went downhill from there. The two teams got nasty and the cards began to fly with every dive.
In the end, it was a record-tying game seeing 16 yellow cards being meted out, 9 to Portugal and 7 to the Netherlands. It wasn’t pretty, and if soccer fans still wonder why the game hasn’t been as successful in North America as it is in the rest of the world (Mexico excluded of course) they just have to look at this disgrace of a game for the answer.
Portugal has left themselves shorthanded for their next game against England, they’ll be missing Deco, Costinha, and possibly Figo and Ronaldo. I expect Beckham and his boys to make easy work of the Portuguese, and then I’ll dust off my Brazilian flag and enjoy the rest of the tournament watching some great-looking soccer, not the ugly spectacle that I witnessed today.
What are you thinking?