LFR Sports

TARGETING OF RONALDO AND UNSPORTSMANSHIP TESTS PORTUGAL'S NERVES

Those dastardly Dutch. Where did their dishonorable performance come from? The Netherlands have always been associated with elegant and innovative football, but played more like a band of thugs Sunday. Granted, this game could be a lesson in perception, many Dutchmen would say it was the Portuguese who played dirty and to some extent they were, but more likely willing participants in this hard fought match. (Click game highlights here)

A second viewing of the game would suggest that Luis Figo's head butt of Khalid Boulahrouz in the 58th minute began the carnage that occurred in the yellow card-filled last two-thirds of the match. That begat Figo taking an elbow to the face, dangerous tackles from both sides, various episodes of pushing and shoving and an unprecedented flurry of red and yellow cards by the Russian referee, Valentin Ivanov.

Instead, there was a subtext to this match that had the postgame feeling of a Las Vegas prize fight and that was a pair a highly unsportsmanlike antics from the Dutch.

The Dutch played this match from the beginning with an American football mindset. It seemed the Dutch had a premeditated plan to take out Portugal's Christiano Ronaldo from the beginning. In the sixth minute, he was severely spiked by Boulahrouz and like a predator sensing its prey injured continually went after Ronaldo's thigh until he was substituted before the end of the first half.

When the Netherlands' John Heitinga advanced the ball after a Portuguese player was injured it violated one of football's most cherished unwritten acts of sportsmanship. It was galling exhibit of a Dutch team hellbent on winning this game at any cost even if it severely tarnished its well-deserved place in world soccer.

If anything, it illustrated a perennial flaw in Portugal's football style; an inability to control their emotions. The lack of control was pervasive from their manager to every player and substitute on the field. At the same time, the world now knows that Portugal will not back down from schoolyard bullies.