The Sunday Times after England's defeat: Oh no, not again.

that's the headlline ?

excellent reference !

highly doubt it was a Stones reference . . .

Totally predictable. England played like a bank managers Five Aside team throughout the whole tournament, and only raised their game when they were a man down. Ronaldo's a cheating @#$%& for sure, but it was a predictable end. Things will deteriorate under McClaren too.

I guess part of being English is to expect this. But I suppose being within the last 8 in the world, as we were last time seems fitting.

Nikolai wrote
"Ronaldo's a cheating @#$%& for sure"
I feel happy for you cause you found a scapegoat
read this
[blogs.guardian.co.uk]

Don't blame Ronaldo
As always, England fans are fingering the wrong man.
Rob SmythJuly 1, 2006 07:35 PM
So we have our pantomime villain. He's a pretty boy, he's foreign, he's cunning and conniving. He's perfect. But as always, millions of distraught England fans have fingered the wrong man in Cristiano Ronaldo. If you take away all the bluster and barely suppressed xenophobia, there are are only two people to blame for the incident that will define England's exit: Wayne Rooney and, to a lesser extent, the referee Horatio Elizondo.

Throughout the tournament, and particularly after being substituted against Sweden, Rooney has been giving an increasingly disquieting homage to the 1991 Paul Gascoigne, who ruined his career in 15 minutes of maniacal madness in the FA Cup final. Rooney was an accident waiting to happen, he stamped on Ricardo Carvalho deliberately and recklessly and, whether he was sent off for that or the push that followed, his actions jeopardised an increasingly dominant England side.

What exactly was Ronaldo supposed to do? Rooney stamped on a team-mate of his. Was he supposed to stand and admire it? Chuckle at the bulldog spirit of his Manchester United colleague? If Ronaldo had stamped on Gary Neville in similar circumstances and Rooney had piled in, we'd have salivated over the all-for-one-one-for-all spirit of England. That's all Ronaldo did. He was then pushed by Rooney, a gesture which he didn't seek to magnify by going down, and the ref decided to send Rooney off. That's the ref's fault for overreacting quite pathetically to the push, not Ronaldo's.

It's not nice to see players talking to referees in such circumstances, but it's a fact of life and the notion that this is somehow more contemptible that deliberately stamping on a man's testicles is narrow-minded English nonsense. Besides, Ronaldo did not wave an imaginary card; we don't even know what he said to the referee.

Ronaldo's knowing wink after Rooney went off was not especially edifying, but then this was hardly a Diego Simeone-style set-up, so if he was winking to anyone it was as likely to be out of nervousness or a misplaced eagerness to please than to be the action of a criminal mastermind smugly acknowledging the brilliance of his sting. Yes he pouted provocatively after he scored the winning goal; so did Andy Moller in 1996; so would you if you won a penalty shoot-out in those circumstances.

Similarly, the stuff before the game - Ronaldo playfully, maybe not playfully raking his head down the back of Rooney's - can be dismissed as an interesting aside in the context of the alleged frostiness between the two at Old Trafford. It is nothing more, and it certainly is not responsible for Rooney's increasingly demented approach to the game. If anyone deserves to take the blame then it's Rooney and the ref, not Ronaldo.

Btw Fifa, according to the Guardian, will investigate the incident, with Rooney facing the possibility of a violent conduct charge.

s-asla Wrote:
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> The Sunday Times after England's defeat: Oh no,
> not again.


LOL. And I recently bought the PS2 gmae "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories". There's a mission in there that's called "Rough Justice". :-D
(True)...

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