...and the rest of the world agrees! Just saw that on the BBC website, good for him for speaking his mind. Ronaldo and most of the Portoguese team are a disgrace to football.
Sure. That shite coming from a guy with a long history of launching into criminally late and cynical studs up challenges. Perhaps he should be spending his time keeping his thug of a girlfriend in check? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4784275.stm
Gerrard missed the Anti-Portuguese bus, that was about a month ago. Is he still pissed that he can't take a PK worth his life? Maybe it's because he didn't get the captains arm-band that he didn't deserve. Kind reminder: The quarter-final was over a month ago, get over it. "Rat ass" Why? Because he talked to the reff? Oh yeah, sure. When Rooney shouts smack at officials, it's fine, he's just got a loose-temper. But when somebody does it against England, oh boy! Ronaldo didn't do anything out of the ordinary, team-mate or not. I'm not defending his tendency to go to ground a bit easy sometimes, but then again, it's not like he's ever been given the benefit of a doubt when he was actually fouled his first few games in England. They called him a diver when he was getting fouled, and eventually, he started diving to get calls. Doesn't do any good because he never gets the call anyway. Mind you, Portugal got much worse calls in the World Cup than England. (Miguel penalty vs. Mexico, no card for a boot to the face on Figo, Thierry Henry over-reaction to get a penalty, Lukas Podolski slip and slide that buys a foul because he was touched 20 seconds beforehand) Sure, some of our players dived, I'm not going to say they didn't. But they didn't get anything out of it. We didn't have any game-winning cheating moments. If we did, in games where we hadn't been cheated out of a call beforehand, maybe I'd see why people call us a disgrace, etc. etc. etc. After all, the English said it was ok for Owen to dive against Argentina because Batistuta dove first. So why wasn't it OK for Ronaldo to dive after Thierry Henry did it and got a penalty? Every one of our games, whether you want to admit or not, we were the second-acting party of any 'diving' or 'cheating.' Remember that. We want to play clean, we do. But if you come out and play like an ass, we'll be asses right back. And must we forget that Joe Cole arguably goes to ground a whole lot easier/as easy as Ronaldo. But it's OK because he's English, no?
It all comes down to population and demography. There are only 5 million people in Scotland, so the actual playing pool for football is pretty small. In that respect we have overachieved, particularly considering how Scottish players dominated the English game for decades. Youth development also goes in cycles and we are currently waiting on our next good crop to come through. Couple with the current problems in our domestic leagues. Considering New York will have double the population of Scotland in a few years, I think we have done okay. Regardless, we invented the football the world plays today, so smoke on that.