Matchday 5 Recap: Ronaldo Given A Roughing Up, Barcelona Win A Wild One,

This recap comes a lit­tle late but there are still a few points I wanted to make.

First off, I was glad to see the Zenit — Juven­tus game pro­ceed with­out inci­dent. After the hor­ri­ble inci­dent ear­lier in the week, it would have been under­stand­able had the game been post­poned but the game did go on and the result did not go as Zenit might have hoped. Zenit will have to be con­tent to defend their UEFA Cup crown as they can­not advance from Group H after a goal­less home draw against already-qualified Juven­tus. Real Madrid’s suc­cess at FC BATE Borisov, thanks to a lone Raul goal, on Tues­day con­firmed that Zenit will fin­ish third. Dick Advo­caat will be left look­ing for answers as his side once again dom­i­nated pos­ses­sion, but could not find the back of the net.

I was going to go through the groups in order but I have to get a few things off my chest first. I had the unfor­tu­nate ‘plea­sure’ of watch­ing the Vil­lar­real — Man­ches­ter United fix­ture. Defend­ing champs Man­ches­ter United are through, as are their Match­day 5 oppo­nents Vil­lar­real, after a stale­mate at El Madrigal.

It was a fourth 0–0 draw in four games between these sides and it was not a very enter­tain­ing game. Nei­ther team played with much energy and looked to be con­tent with a draw from the onset. Fur­ther mak­ing this an unwatch­able mess, was the con­stant sim­u­la­tion (div­ing) and harass­ing of the offi­cials to book oppos­ing play­ers. Both sides were guilty of this poor sports­man­ship and should feel ashamed of their behav­iour. One player I’d like to sin­gle out for scorn is Joan Capdevlla.

His chal­lenge on Ronaldo in the late stages of the match was rash and dan­ger­ous. From the mul­ti­ple replays I watched, he looked to be aim­ing the studs of his boot at the inside of Ronaldo’s knee. ESPN’s Tommy Smyth com­ments summed it up nicely — it was stu­pid and there’s no place for it in the game. Ronaldo ended up with a vis­i­ble bruise/laceration on the thigh area around the knee. The fact that Capdev­ila was motion­ing that if Ronaldo was so injured he should be sub­sti­tuted was another dose of poor sports­man­ship on top of his already thug­gish chal­lenge. I was sur­prised by this as Capdev­ila is not nor­mally this type of player and in a game with lit­tle on the line, I had to won­der what got him so riled. Ronaldo cer­tainly was at his worst, div­ing and embell­ish­ing a num­ber of fouls — not to men­tion get­ting him­self booked for petu­lance over a call made by the assis­tant ref­eree, but Capdev­ila has now got­ten him­self sus­pended for the next cou­ple of matches and that does not help his club.

The pre­vail­ing logic is that oppo­nents are try­ing to kick Ronaldo off the park. Villarreal’s tac­tics are being cited as merely the lat­est exam­ple of how oppo­nents are try­ing to get under the skin of the tal­ented United for­ward. Alex Fer­gu­son has been call­ing for him to be more pro­tected, which is all fine and well, but Ronaldo does not help him­self out. Instead of stay­ing upright and play­ing, he dives and play-acts, which casts doubt into the referee’s mind, even when he is being well and truly fouled. In the Vil­lar­real game, he went down heav­ily and death-rolled his way across the pitch after only the faintest of touches. The ref­eree bought into it and gave the foul rather than card­ing him for simulation.

I am not excus­ing Capdevila’s chal­lenge, not by a long shot. Merely point­ing out that Ronaldo is not a poor, inno­cent vic­tim. He is also guilty of an offense to foot­ball. Cheat­ing. I know in many cul­tures, div­ing to win a call is con­sid­ered ‘smart’ play but I can­not bring myself to agree with that mind­set. It’s plain and sim­ply dis­hon­est. Ian Her­bert of The Inde­pen­dent looks back at some of the other tal­ented play­ers through­out the his­tory of the game that have become the tar­get of abuse.

OK now that the rant­ing is over, I will climb down off the soap­box and recap some of the other action. Group G is also decided as Arse­nal defeated Dynamo Kyiv at home by a 1–0 score­line. A Nick­las Bendt­ner strik in the 87th minute was just enough to see the Gun­ners through and give some relief to a side that’s been in a tumul­tuous state the last cou­ple of weeks. The Gun­ners have lost three Pre­mier League games this month and William Gal­las was stripped of the cap­taincy after pub­licly crit­i­cis­ing his team-mates. “It was what we need, reas­sur­ance, and will give us that,” Wenger told the BBC in a post-match inter­view. Add to that a recent win over Chelsea in domes­tic action and Arse­nal should almost be over this whole mess, at least for the time being. Spec­u­la­tion has ramped up that Gal­las will leave in the Jan­u­ary trans­fer win­dow but with Arse­nal thin on expe­ri­ence it would be a risky move for Wenger.

Arse­nal will be joined in the next round by FC Porto who held off a deter­mined Fener­bahce side and picked up an impres­sive 2–1 win in Turkey. Lisan­dro scored a brace for Porto within a 10 minute span in the mid­dle of the first half. The vis­i­tors then had to work hard to see off the match and book their place in the next round. As for Fener­bahce, they need to win at Dynamo Kyiv on Match­day 6 in order to fin­ish third and go into the UEFA Cup.

In Group F, Bay­ern Munich were pow­ered into the final 16 by two second-half goals from Miroslav Klose and another from Luca Toni as they recorded a 3–0 vic­tory against FC Steaua Bucuresti. Bay­ern were stymied in the first half but made the most of their chances in the sec­ond to leave the Roman­ian side rooted to the bot­tom of the group. Bay­ern have been look­ing stronger and stronger as the sea­son go on and most clubs will want to avoid fac­ing them in the next round of the com­pe­ti­tion. Fiorentina’s loss to Lyon means that the UEFA Cup slot is still up for grabs as the two bot­tom clubs face-off in what should be an excit­ing Match­day 6 encounter.

I’ll have more info in the Match­day 6 pre­view I will be post­ing over the weekend.

Tagged as: cristiano ronaldo, diving, joan capdevila, manchester united, red card