Ugly side of ‘joga bonito’

Often loud cheers turn into gasps of shock when an ugly tackle cuts short spectacular run with the ball by a striker. Although this unsavoury act has become part and parcel of the game, some stretch limits or forget sanity.

Pepe (Kepler Laveran Lima Ferreira) lost his sanity and entered into the list of ignominious acts at the world’s greatest sporting show.

Later in hindsight, even Pepe would have realised that what he did was completely unwarranted, shameful and that he deserved his marching orders.

Thomas Muller challenged Pepe deep inside his own half. The Portuguese defender, infamous of getting red cards, slung his arm back and struck the German in his attempt to shield the ball. Muller reacted theatrically, collapsing to the ground, holding his face. Infuriated, Pepe, walked over to Muller, bent over and stuck his head in to German’s forehead, probably to give piece of his mind for a fake fall. That was enough to get his marching orders.

Pepe is not the first to head-butt in the quadrennial championship.

The most infamous head-butt has been that of Zinedine Zidane, arguably the finest footballer of his generation. Coming out of retirement the French star led his country to the cusp the 2006 World Cup title but instead ended up tainting his reputation after a moment of sheer madness in the dying minutes of extra time in the final against Italy.

Zidane was obviously red carded for his violent head-butt to the chest of Italian defender Marco Materazzi. It was an off-the-ball incident but squarely captured on camera and replayed all over the world and continues to be played over YouTube.

There have been other players who bore star status but lost their cool and earned dubious distinctions to show ugly side of the game.

David Beckham, who has featured in Fifa 100 list of the world’s greatest living players, was sent off for vicious reaction and hitting a player.

At the 1998 World Cup arch-nemesis England and Argentina were pitted against each other in the knock-out round of 16. Argentinian Diego Simeone brought down Beckham. As he was lying on the floor, the England star kicked out at Simeone in retaliation.

The unwarranted act triggered attacks on his home, spiteful hate mails and even the burning of effigies of him. The English Media picked on him as he had become an easy scapegoat for England’s exit from the World Cup.

The match between hosts Chile and Italy in 1962 could go down in history as one of the ugliest World Cup matches. The infamous match was called ‘Battle of Santiago’. Scuffles broke out at regular intervals throughout the match. Italians Mario David and Giorgio Ferrini were both sent off, while Chile’s Leonel Sanchez broke opponent Humberto Maschio’s nose with a left hook.

Besides the physical incidents, the game has been sullied by some unsavoury spitting acts too. The most infamous of all footballing ‘spats’ involved Holland’s Frank Rijkaard and Rudi Voller of Germany during the 1990 World Cup Finals in Italy.

In fact Rijkaard twice spat at the German striker. First he spat after a fierce tackle, Voller got yellow for complaining to the referee about the Dutch spitting on him.

Then again during a corner kick, Rijkaard-Voller spat turned ugly and both were sent off. With nothing to lose Rijkaard aimed another gobbet of spittle on Voller carefully coiffured hair as they both walked towards the dressing room. Let’s hope Jekylls of the game stay in forefront and Hydes don’t show up for the rest of the World Cup Finals in Brazil.