The Battle of Santiago II

In the words of Owen Hargreaves: “what the fucking fuck?!”. Last night’s scrap game between Portugal and Holland was a total farce. How many cards were there? Lets count, 16 yellow, and four red. That’s record equalling. Called a “fandango of cheating, skulduggery and rampant play-acting” by a Guardian journalist with too much time to hit shift+F7, the match was only interesting for the fighting, not for the football. When the game was actually played, I thought Holland were the better of the two teams and that bodes well for Saturday.

I have already said what I think of Figo below, but special mention should also be reserved for Costinha who seemed to be gong after tackles with the express desire of getting sent off. Some of his tackles were unreal. All good fun though, and both he and Deco will be out for the game at the weekend.

By the way - here is a great video of the actual Battle of Santiago. As you can see, they did onfield violence properly in those days. The commentary is in Spanish, but you can work out what's happening.