Mark Boulton

23 Responses to “Bloody penalties again!”

1. 
   F said on: July 1st, 2006 at 7:37 pm

   I’m not a foot­ball fan either, but have just got back from watch­ing the match in a pub (again, not some­thing I’d ever nor­mally do).  It was unbe­liev­ably tense and I can see why people get so wrapped up in it.  Unfor­tu­nately there were sev­eral knuckle-scraping idi­ots behav­ing in exactly the ste­reo­typ­ical way that gives the game a bad repu­ta­tion.  Walk­ing home, there were police every­where; I asked one if they always had so many people out on a Sat­urday; they don’t, they were manned-up because of the game.

2. 
   Dan Jallits said on: July 1st, 2006 at 7:40 pm

   Being from the U.S. I knew that my team didn’t stand a chance, so I have been root­ing for our Eng­lish cous­ins. I am with you on the pen­al­ties, the amount of yel­low and red cards seems a bit excessive.

3. 
   Justin Perkins said on: July 1st, 2006 at 10:31 pm

   You’ve got to give it to Por­tugal, they really con­trolled that game and their goal keeper is amazing. 

   There was noth­ing excess­ive about Rooney’s red card, imo. When you act like a baby, you get treated like one.

4. 
   Mike D. said on: July 1st, 2006 at 11:20 pm

   This just goes to rein­force the centuries-old adage, “Never crush a man’s balls with your feet.”

5. 
   Jo?o Craveiro said on: July 1st, 2006 at 11:21 pm

   If I got my math right, Eng­land got the same yel­low cards as Por­tugal (plus Rooney’s red) with twice as many fouls. If that’s excess­ive, then someone must have missed Hol­land x Portugal. 

   Por­tugal has lousy moments (many failed passes, some in quite dan­ger­ous areas), but con­trolled the thing, made it to the pen­al­ties, and per­formed bet­ter — but for those who prefer to put it that way, yeah, there may have been 120 minutes of res­ist­ance and then luck. 

   And now France. C’mon brit­ish people, we’ve gotta be sup­port­ing us now — it’s the French! ;)

6. 
   Dan Jallits said on: July 2nd, 2006 at 12:11 am

   My com­ment above regard­ing yel­low and red cards was in ref­er­ence to this year’s World Cup in its entirety, not just the Por­tugal vs. Eng­land match.

7. 
   Stephen said on: July 2nd, 2006 at 12:03 pm

   I zoned out after that red card, and found myself facing the bar rather than the screen. It just seemed so fated from then on.

8. 
   Leszek Swirski said on: July 2nd, 2006 at 12:06 pm

   Well that’s what you get for hav­ing yobs like Rooney on the team. Maybe one day, foot­ball will be about how well you can kick a ball, not how well you can kick someone in the ‘nads.

9. 
   Mark Boulton said on: July 2nd, 2006 at 5:25 pm

   Yep, fair point Leszek, although I’m not sure Eng­land deserved to lose. Sure, Rooney was out of line, and was pun­ished in the right man­ner, but over­all Eng­land played incred­ibly well with ten men.

10. 
    Graham Sanders said on: July 2nd, 2006 at 8:45 pm

    Being a foot­ball fan and who’s watched the major­ity of games this World Cup I am only too happy to see Eng­land out. 

    Let face the hard facts here:
    
    1. All the Eng­lish per­fo­mances were poor through­out the World Cup
    
    2. The decision to choose 4 strikers, 2 whom were injured, 1 who had never played in the Premi­er­ship and a Gir­affe wasn’t exactly the greatest idea Sven ever had
    
    3. The FA made a huge cock up try­ing to employ Scol­ari before the competition 

    They think it’s all over? it is now

11. 
    Justin Perkins said on: July 2nd, 2006 at 8:51 pm

    > and a Giraffe

    Zing.

12. 
    Leszek Swirski said on: July 2nd, 2006 at 10:34 pm

    Well yeah Mark, Eng­land played well con­sid­er­ing they were a man down, but to be fair Por­tugal played well too — and more import­antly, you can’t deny that their keeper made four incred­ible pen­alty saves, and the one he let through brushed his fin­gers too. I’d say that his per­form­ance alone deserved a win for the team. 

    I think Eng­land could have won it really, if not for the demor­al­ising loss of Beck­ham — but then again, there’s a very appro­pri­ate say­ing for that which includes eggs and a basket. 

    Any­way, don’t these people wear shin guards? I swear I’ve been kicked harder than that, and I never felt the need to bury my face in the grass afterwards.

13. 
    steve said on: July 3rd, 2006 at 3:35 am

    Eng­land played their best foot­ball of the Cup without Beck­ham and Rooney on the field. Watch­ing the match on tv from Aus­tralia I thought Eng­land played really well with ten men. Por­tugal never looked much like scor­ing whereas Eng­land cre­ated sev­eral chances. Was a shame that Eng­land fell apart in the pen­alty shoot out. I’m not fan of Por­tugal though, they have couple of poten­tial Oscar win­ning act­ors in Figo and Ronaldo. 

    I for one love the “gir­affe”, he gives hope to talk, skinny people every­where that they can play sport! :) Love him or hate him, he gave it everything against Portugal.

14. 
    Pierce said on: July 3rd, 2006 at 12:39 pm

    I was root­ing for Por­tugal (hop­ing Eng­land lose is bred into Irish­men. Sorry, there’s noth­ing I can do about it). But to be hon­est, I was wish­ing they could both lose by the end of it. One of the worse games of the competition. 

    Com­pared to the Brazil/France game that even­ing… that was a game.

    Still, I’m not sure Rooney did it on pur­pose. Hon­estly, it looked kind of accidental.

15. 
    Justin Perkins said on: July 3rd, 2006 at 1:59 pm

    > Still, I?m not sure Rooney did it on purpose. 

    It was his tem­per that earned him a red card, not the actual ball crunching.

16. 
    Pierce said on: July 3rd, 2006 at 2:31 pm

    >It was his tem­per that earned him a red card, >not the actual ball crunching. 

    Well then I would have sent off Ron­aldo for inter­fer­ing too. Since when is ref­er­ee­ing a demo­cratic process?

17. 
    Stephen Clarke said on: July 3rd, 2006 at 5:16 pm

    Inter­est­ing foot­ball, is like ‘mil­it­ary intel­li­gence’ both come under the cat­egory of ‘oxymoron’.

18. 
    Leszek Swirski said on: July 3rd, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    While “foot­ball viol­ence” is a redund­ant synonym

19. 
    Norberto Leite said on: July 5th, 2006 at 9:57 am

    Being a port­guese guy I must tell you guys that it is quite good to win in pen­al­ties. I don’t know why:) Any way Rooney realy meant to do it! Ron­aldo made what every foot­bal player would do and i don’t think that he influ­enced the ref­eree because he almost doesn’t know how to speak. And no, foot­bal does’t mean viol­ence, it means phys­ical con­tact and that influ­ences viol­ence. Foot­ball im my opin­ion is a very beuati­ful game or do I have to remind you about the goals that this world cup as given so far as the argen­tiniam or the Joe Cole goal… Be fare Por­tugal deserved to win and the french are next:P

20. 
    Leszek Swirski said on: July 5th, 2006 at 12:33 pm

    Oh no, foot­ball can be beau­ti­ful, sure—what I’m say­ing is that it is also inex­plic­ably linked with con­stant viol­ence, if not from the play­ers them­selves (e.g. Argen­tina) then from the fans.

21. 
    Bruno Santos said on: July 5th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    I agree with Leszek, more than ever, sport is loos­ing a little bit of what it was sup­pose to be about; Fair play.
    
    Either in the field or out­side it.

    Being Fair Play the main idea the ger­man organ­isa­tion wanted to pro­mote, we shure did have some bad moments in this world cup. I can recall two games, one of Argen­tina and Por­tugal vs Neth­er­lands, in witch play­ers made them­selfs cen­ter of the aten­tions for the wrong reasons. 

    And the same hap­pens with fans. Lately, in the news, I see too often images of wrecked cafes and sports fans bee­ing arrested. 

    I don’t believe that is even close to the true spirit of foot­ball, or any other sport by that matter! 

    btw, I’m por­tuguese and must say that Eng­land played really well against por­tugal, even more if we see that they were one player short.

22. 
    Graham Sanders said on: July 7th, 2006 at 8:37 am

    2 play­ers were miss­ing from the Por­tuguese side who faced the lack lustre Eng­lish: Deco and Costinha

23. 
    Milos said on: July 8th, 2006 at 7:40 pm

    [?] A very accost­ing lay­out and a inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion topic, do you provide any Web-based ser­vices to uni­ver­sit­ies or students. [?]