EDUARDO CELEBRATING HIS CONTROVERSIAL PENALTY
Eduardo was the center of attention Tuesday night in London as Arsenal knocked off Celtic 3-1 to qualify for the Champions League group stage. In the 27′ with the match still scoreless, Eduardo came steaming into the box to find himself one-on-one with Celtic keeper Artur Boruc. What resulted was one of the most obvious dives I have ever seen with my two eyes. Not only did Eduardo deserve a yellow card for the flop, but he was actually awarded a penalty kick, which he converted moments later.
SCOTTISH FA CHIEF CALLS FOR EDUARDO BAN
I love Eduardo and am glad he is finally back to full fitness, but he can’t be pulling off stuff like this- with the entire world watching. Sure it’s a players job to do whatever it takes to win, but I was not a fan of this classless move by Dudu. I only hope Eduardo doesn’t make the same mistake twice this season as he would tarnish his good-natured reputation after returning from that horrific leg injury. He currently has opposing fans eating out of his hands, but if he gets the reputation of a ‘flopper’ like Ronaldo, he won’t only stop receiving calls from referees, but he would also diminish all the acclaim he received from coming back to the game of football so quickly.
I’m sure this will all blow over. The draw for Group Stage will take place August 27th.
IN OTHER NEWS, BROUGHT TO YOU BY IVICA…
Panathinaikos were ousted from the UEFA Champions League after suffering a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Atletico Madrid, who advances to the groups stages of the competition on a 5-2 aggregate. Mario Galinović had no chance of stopping the first goal of the contest that had went in off one of his own defenders for an own goal. Sergio Aguero scored towards the end of the match on a shot that was aimed directly at Galinović, yet managed to sneak its way under the suddenly sloppy and clearly unmotivated goalkeeper.
It is going to be a very long season for Mario Galinović if he doesn’t turn his attitude and game around soon. His confidence seems to be shot at the moment after these two matches with Atletico Madrid. Panathinaikos will now be entered in the Europa League draw Friday.
Ante Rukavina was absent from the Panathinaikos lineup; and I have absolutely no explanation as to why. I assume that he has possibly picked up an injury in the past few weeks and the coaching staff doesn’t want to risk any long term damage so early in the season.
Having just transferred from AS Monaco of the French First Division, Nikola Pokrivač did not suit up for Red Bull Salzburg’s UEFA Champions League second-leg playoff with Israeli outfit Maccabi Haifa FC. Red Bull Salzburg were defeated 3-0 in Tel Aviv, exiting the UEFA Champions League competition 5-1 on aggregate. Red Bull Salzburg must now wait until Friday for the Europa League draw in Monaco to see who they will face in the group stages.
I cant believe how much grief eduardo is getting, its a little over blown ya it was a dive, not the first nor the last but i cant remember a player getting so much hate for it the other day against manu they booed him, how many times ronaldo dove, kaka or ronaldo would never get a ban like this, i think the press have been on a little witch hunt if u ask me.
I watched Rooney's flop and was no where near Eduardo's flop. I am with Ziva Istina.
ultimately, everyone makes mistakes. Eduardo has never flopped like this before and as long as it doesnt happen again, in a few months no one will remember the flop.
If it continues, Eduardo will be transferred to the Italian Divers league
Rooney's actions were nowhere near as bad as Da Silva's. Yes, Rooney seemed tobe going down, but at least he had contact. Da Silva dove when noone touched him.
Ante, it was a flop. Rooney was on the way down before Almunia got to him. But since its Rooney, UEFA won't do anything. Hypocrites.
Apparently Wayne Rooney just flopped in the box vs. Arsenal and won a penalty kick call. Haven't seen the video yet but this should be controversial.
Eduardo was on the bench to witness it.
I am with Ziva Istina
"picke dive, real men play the game"
Vatreni, I agree with you when you said that if players like Rooney or Gerrard dive then there is no big deal. Its a terrible bias but nonetheless I still hate seeing Eduardo dive.
There has to be consistency with these bans but I doubt we will see any. There are plenty of worse dives out there that have been overlooked. All I have to say is Cristiano Ronaldo in the past for Man Utd. He could dive around like a little fairy and get away with it like nothing. UEFA is too corrupt.
Srna's career is going to be wasted chasing Dynamo Kyiv for the Ukraine titel.
Too bad he's cup tied, he could've been a real asset to a big name Euro club.
On Sky Sports News they are asking every coach what they think about the Eduardo situation. Its ridiculous they are singling out one player when this happens all the time. Scottish officials want Eduardo to be suspended for 2 Champions League games. THAT IS RIDICULOUS! Martin Taylor was suspended for 3 games for almost ending Eduardo's career. Just ask yourself if it would be such a big deal if Gerrard or Rooney dove in the box. I highly doubt there would have been any controversy. I don't like seeing players dive in the box but they are blowing this way out of proportion. Celtic was dominated in the first match and the second match. There is no way they would have beaten Arsenal even if the penalty was not called. Diving is a problem but tackles cleats up are a much bigger problem. Taylor should have been suspended at least a year possibly even his career. They should make suspensions longer for idiot defenders before they fix the diving situation. Diving will not ruin anyone's career.
Next season in the Europa League they will have five officials for the first time. 1 official will be on each goal line to watch activity in the box and to see if balls cross the goal line. You can argue that if that referee was there in the Arsenal game Eduardo may have gotten a yellow card instead of a penalty. It will be interesting to see how the game functions with 5 refs. It will be awkward for me to see 5 refs out there when I'm so used to seeing 3. Maybe it will be better for the game. I think it may add to confusion to who is making the calls and who is in charge. Time will tell.
Re: Joze
Regards the Shaktar defender that signed for Barca, Ukrainian international centre back Cringinski is your man. Srna says he's going nowhere as nobody will match his wages. Cringinski prob be a sub which is not something Srna should be looking for. Pletikosa rumoured to be off to Spurs. Don't know if its true or utter crap.
Real men play the game. Okay fine. Someone breaks your leg then Eduardo's got every right to stick a bottle in his face. That injury was horrid. You call that real men playing football or a cowardly assault done in the context of football.
Eduardo shouldn't have gone down so easy, but no way should he be banned. That's a disgrace and they'll turn a blind eye to any big name player. Its no big deal cos Eduardo needs occasional breaks anyway. But to single him out is disgusting and brings shame on the ref who made a decision he as a qualified person deemed correct.
Uefa are corrupt end of story. I still hope Eduardo keeps looking out for himself as the next bad challenge is just around the corner. There are people who do not play the beautiful game. They play lets kick opposition off the park game. I cannot believe any Croatia fan would be happy for Eduardo to be clattered and believe that he should not be rolling out the way. No way can his leg tolerate it. If you want him to stand there and take challenges we'll see no Eduardo for another year.
picke dive, real men play the game
I really think diving is ruining the beautiful game. It's cheating and I hate seeing player do it. When you dive you are attempting to gain an unfair advantage over your opponent and it shouldn't be tolerated.
Dudu, I hope this is the last time you will dive. I don't want to see good players like Eduardo turn into cheaters.
JP..well spoken, my friend. Well spoken.
Ziva, why are you singling him out for diving? Everyone dives every now and then.
If TV replays help get rid of cheats in the game, then I am all for it. The NFL and NBA use replay to determine discipline issues and those leagues are doing fine. Maybe then our naturalized croatian via brazil would not dive.
Hah what a joke!
I hope you guys understand that the only reason that we are still even talking about this, is that most of the UEFA board members are Scottish.
What a bunch of clowns. Suspension for a what? He didn't even get carded by the ref.
Buddy from the Scottish FA uses a bunch of $5 dollar words, making it seems as if Dudu just stole fire from the gods, and now all of a sudden there's an issue. I've never heard such crap in my life, and if they were to suspend Dudu they'd be opening up a huge can of worms. It's no wonder that the Lithuanian player got suspended retroactively against a Scottish team. I guess they figure that since they can't play soccer, they'll exercise their powerlessness on the field, in the realm of good ol' "impartial" administration.
The game happens on the field in real-time, it is not played on TV.
The biggest threat to the "integrity of the game" is to use tv to retroactively penalize players after the game.
I'm not sure how these people look at themselves in the mirror every morning. They obviously do not.
If anybody needs to be suspended it's the Scottish FA for "threatening the integrity of the game" by being a bunch of sore-losers, and for being treasonous and disrespectful to the decisions of their referees. Buddy should resign. End of story.
Ziva Istina should likewise be suspended for the next two articles on the CSR site, for agreeing with this :):)
I have no problem with a suspension as long as they give it to others…. They need to use video replay after matches to determine if players dove or other disciplinary items. the NFL does this after every game.
So now he's banned for 2 games. Soccer needs video replay or else the refs should live with their decisions without penalty to the player.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/8223917.stm
i could care less about the flop, who cares, do whatever you need to do to win, dont care what people think about you, just win games for your club and country is all that matters, he can get labeled whatever he wants to, but at the end of the day when his team wins, it doesn't matter.
Just something I've heard
someone told me that he saw an interview with Barcelona manager on Sky Sports and that Barcelona are very close to signing a Shakhtar player, and hopefully the deal will be done over the next 5 days.
I think Srna is the only player they are tracking from Shakhtar.
Dinamofan:), you've got a valid point. Why is it that strikers who do a bit of play-acting are treated like the lowest of criminals why defenders who make lunging, dangerous, and reckless challenges- possibly causing injury- usually receive nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders by the commentators and press (at very worst they're given the almost affectionate title of "donkey"). Bit of a double standard…
Croatiafan), thank you, you said exactly what I was thinking. People don't realize that these decisions are made in milliseconds and are almost part of muscle memory from training and instinct.( not to mention Dudu's unique history with injury). People are acting like he just robbed someones grandmother. Dudu's been through enough hell to know that going down easy is way preferable to being carried off on a stretcher. And if Eduardo's name was Edward Jones (or Gerrard or Rooney), do you really believe the British press would have this on the back pages? I bet most of the self-righeous whiners I've seen calling Dudu a "cheat" and a " lowlife" do so while listening to their iPod full of illegally downloaded music and while typing on pirated software…
And finally, why should Dudu receive a 2-4 match ban? If the referee had called it as a dive, he would either a)tell Dudu to get up and play on, or b)give him a yellow card. "Simulation", as they call it, isn't a red card offense.
Re: Ante
I am 6 ft 3 but go down easily under challenges. Eeek i suppose i dont have any excuse. I personally have nothing against diving. I am in the forwards union. I hate defenders that try the rough stuff and are happy to rake their studs down your achilies. There is no reason why a player should just look to take a challenge. Why not ride it. Why would you want to show sportsmanship anyway to rough defenders. Ball hits net. Thats all that matters. If Eduardo starts getting soft again the next Martin Taylor will be just around the corner. Eduardo should follow Suker's one dimensional goalscoring in whatever way policy. To be quite frankly honest considering the injury Eduardo had, the Rooney tackle on Kranjcar and Kranjcar injury last season i wouldn't care if Eduardo punched the ball in the net whilst in England. Its dog eat dog in the EPL.
honestly, who gives a fuck, eduardo scored that pentaly, eduardos comin back
One game ban and that is it….he will learn not to dive. No place for it.
Big deal. He dived. But how many times have you seen a dive cost a match? This dive didn't impact the game at all. Aresenal would have won anyway. I don't like seeing diving all game by a whole team (ie Portugal in WC 2006). This didn't make or break either team.
I love that fact that Eduardo is playing the game correctly, it's just a shame that it was such a blatant flop for the world to see.
However, in Eduardo's defense, let me give you some facts about the mentality of a small soccer player.
I myself am 5'8" 145 pounds. My greatest ability on the pitch is my speed. 99% of the time I am the smallest guy on the field. When a bigger, much stronger player battles me for a 50-50 ball etc. for example, I have learned throughout my career how to deal with the contact.
If you go in at 100% and try to out power the much bigger player you're going to kill yourself sooner than later. The smaller players, which Eduardo is, know how to play off the contact. This should not be considered diving or flopping. I have this debate with my friends all the time. They think I'm faking it every time I'm on the floor. It still hurts when you get hit people.
What a smaller player learns to do is let gravity play its role. Once you know you can't do anything more on the play and forcing a foul is your best bet, we take the foul. It's not that we're flopping all the time, it's simply physics in the end. Watch a small player get hit next time you watch a game. They initiate contact, get hit, roll on the ground like a ninja and are up on their feet in the next second.
A bigger, much less coordinated player like a defender goes down hard and usually doesn't roll when they get hit hard.
Eduardo was expecting contact and may or may not have already quit on the play as he might have known he didn't have a chance on goal. 9 out of 10 times the keepers would have initiated contact on the striker in that play to force a legitimate penalty. I give prop to Boruc who played it perfectly. I have no idea how he controlled his body so well during the play.
Regarding missing the penalty on purpose. That would be as classy as a human being can get. However, thee men are warriors once they step onto that field. Sometimes calls go for you and sometimes they go against you. That's part of the game. I don't feel bad when a call goes for me which I know shouldn't have. It's not my job to referee the game. I will however let an opposing player know the truth of the play and offer my sympathy for the bad call. But that's how the game goes. You shouldn't be playing if you can't handle some bad beats once in awhile.
Bottomline: Eduardo will be fine as long as he doesn't get caught with his hand in the cookie jar in the next few months.
If UEFA do that they are in dispute with their referee. There is nothing so far to suggest UEFA dispute that decision, just a lot of hot air from a few frustrated people. The ref said to Boruc at half time that he clipped Eduardo's heal. It was a flop, but i don't think Eduardo intended it to look like that. He expected a challenge that didn't come. Steven Gerrard has done this about 20 times in his career i think, where he takes the ball to the byline and then rolls the keeper.
I still say Eduardo needs to learn to roll challenges. the more he learns to do this till his leg is healing the better. If he does get one game ban who cares. I think he has to be rested now and then anyway. Maybe him being banned is going news to Croatia. We need him fit for at least rest of qualifying campaign. More times he's rested is good for us and its less chance someone can injure him. For us we just need Eduardo fit for three more matches and then two play offs. If he misses the occasional Arsenal game to help achieve that so be it.
Right now Eduardo's dive is front and center at espn soccernet. No doubt he will receive at least a 1 match ban. It's sad, but every player has taken a dive at least once in their career. However, Dudu took on on a very big stage, the UEFA Champions league, televised for all the world to see, a dive which proved to be the dagger in the heart of Celtic and their chances of advancing to the group stage.
Not one of his greatest moments, but it doesn't take away from the kind of person and player he is.
Basically Wenger made a comment saying he did not know whether he could count on Eduardo or Rosicky this season. This means that really Eduardo needed ideally even longer rehabilitation time, but instead he is expected to fill Adebayor's boots as first choice striker.
Physically i would hugely doubt Eduardo's leg is properly healed and to the level of what it would be before the injury. I think Eduardo has to box clever this season. He cannot be taking full blown physical challenges. This does not mean he needs to dive or roll over against a person like Boruc who is not a malicious player. However it does mean he needs to do it against people who are going to look to trip him up and give him a strong challenge. There is no way his leg can take a full blown challenge at the moment. I think its a wake up and smell the roses time for Eduardo. Wenger helped him by getting rid of some of the ego's at Arsenal like Adebayor. Fabregas is a Eduardo supporter and a team player, but i don't think Bentner and Van Persie particularly are. Eduardo has to be able to tell his strikers when they refuse to pass to him etc and stop looking like the new guy in the squad. Then moment where Bentner tried to take his penalty off him was more annoying then the dive. I think this attitude about Eduardo showed he means business this season and has wised up to English football.
@croatiafan I agree Boruc was coming at Eduardo quickly. I think Eduardo was trying to avoid contact as much as possible. You have to remember he's not thinking about this 5 or 10 seconds before it happens. His decision to fall is a reaction to the keeper coming at him. In the replay you can see that there was no contact. I'm not sure how Boruc was able to stop himself but I have to say it was impressive. I think it would have been great if Eduardo hit the penalty slowly to Boruc to miss intentionally. He would have gained enormous respect but Wenger would have probably killed him. I think Klose did it once in Germany after he slipped and the referee called a pk. I don't like what Eduardo did but many players do it. Its really not a big deal. He just can't make it a habit.
I'm looking forward to Eduardo having a great season and leading us to the World Cup. I don't like when people say he's not Croatian. If Eduardo never came to Croatia who knows where he would have ended up. He knows that coming to Croatia changed his life for the best and I believe that he loves wearing the checkers.
I also don't believe Eduardo will do this often. He thought he would try it. Good luck to him as far as i'm concerned. I think he should keep his self preservation attitude and definitely not be pushed about by berks like Bentner and Van Persie. However i think he prob realised that incident came out wrong so might be a bit more wise. Eduardo is after all a thinking player and Wenger and him prob will talk about it. It was really down to it being Artur Boruc unfortunately to it came out wierd. As i was trying to see before my mistypes. Most of keepers would have took him out. Unfortunately Artur Boruc is a wierd specimen. How he didn't even manage to touch Eduardo despite being some close takes some careful arm coordination.
Sorry for the mistype in my last post. its early in the morn here.
As someone that has broke their leg badly whilst playing football i know what Eduardo did here. Many might not agree with this i think Eduardo was stupid and naive when he got his leg snapped by Martin Taylor. Before all the influx of foreign players – football was full of rough players who would go out onto a field to harm players and there were loads of guys like Ruddock, Dicks, McMahon etc who were infamous.
Basically there are certain players who set out to hurt or rough up the opposition. Eduardo turned up to the Premier League seeing players like Ronaldo and Bergkamp and the way he dangled the ball out in front of a guy like Taylor just left himself exposed to that challenge.
However as far as i'm concerned last night was a massive forward stop in Eduardo's thinking and hopefully Kranjcar, Modric will also take note. How Eduardo is playing now is like Naive. He is no longer acting like new person easy to be picked on by others. Even Bentner tried to take his penalty off him last night. In my opinion it was even good when he squared up to McGeedy. Eduardo clearly has a self preservation mentality now, which understand cos it was my mentality when i broke my leg. Basically now he is prepared to ride physical challenges rather than be oblivious to them. He easily could have been clattered by Boruc. Last face in 80% of keepers would not have took him out. Maybe cos we are talking about not an conventional type keeper that Boruc actually pulled out the challenge. Maybe this is what you call a footballing keeper whose aware of the game. Eduardo however was expecting a challenge, so rather than being hit. He thought he roll over it. Basically his dive did not come after Boruc pull himself away. It happened at the same time as Boruc was suppose to have impacted. Unfortunately for Eduardo he pulled away completely and made Eduardo's action look more blatant than it would have normally been had Boruc moved cos the players were extremely close together.
I'm not sticking up for Eduardo for sake of it, buy firstly 100's of players do this. Eduardo didn't use to much, but look what happened to him cos of it. Now he has self preservation mentality which is good cos people will go out to hurt him. Look at before the go you had some of the rough Scot defenders like Caldwell sounding of about that he'd rough Arsenal up and Scot Brown throughout the match kicking at Diarby. Basically some Celtic players were prepared to do the rough stuff so Eduardo had to keep an eye out, its just that it was Boruc who is more likely to call you names than physically injure you which was the problem. If it was a different Celtic player it could have been a different story. Eduardo also spurned some opportunities through trying to keep out of challenges. When he went at the ball with his studs which he also did for Croatia against Andorra this is not ideally how a player finishes off those chances. They normally side foot and face into a challenge, but Eduardo keeps going in shuds first which is self preservation. Basically from our point of view we don't want Eduardo falling prey to some of the nasty balls that exists in the game again as his leg is still not going to be as solid as it should be, so i'm perfectly okay if he wants to slide off challenge and keep away from bad impact. I've personally got no idea why anyone would want to wait to get hit by a challenge. Every other skillful player does this so have no issue with Eduardo wising up.
Vinko,
take a deep breathe and relax my friend. I am a huge huge huge Eduardo fan. Sure the guy has been through some rough times(his days in Brazil, sleeping at Maksimir, his leg, etc) however, this means nothing when the cameras show that he flopped. Look at the way his arms flop after the so called contact with the keeper.
If my own brother flopped, I would be the first to say that he flopped and would chew his head off because I care, because he is blood. Eduardo is not blood, but he is one of us. As Ante and I would say, he is an "adopted Croatian".
Yes, Ronaldo had a huge reputation as a flopper during his first few years at ManU. This doesn't excuse Eduardo.
I just hate to see this in the game today, especially from "one of us".
How come none of these floppers, or players that flop once have come out and said, "yes, I got a little contact and I flopped. I apologize, it will never happen again."
Eddy, you have the talent and soon, you will return to all star status. Don't start any Ronaldo shit.
Vinko, I get that you are upset at everyone jumping on his case. Everyone makes mistakes. I forgive him and lets move on. Hopefully, there wont be a second time.
Look at the way Eduardo went for that penalty kick. He had this guilty look on his face, he knew he didnt deserve that kick.
From the camera angles given it looked like a complete dive I'll be honest I'm the biggest Eduardo fan that exists and the only thing I'm mad about is how everyone jumps on his case about it OMG it's not lie he does this all the time this is the first time this has happened give him a break. The entire Italian squad of guidos does it and don't get me started on Ronaldo. But come on one time and the camera angles weren't all that great hell if you go to Eduardo's page on wikipedia it claims that there was some contact between Boruc and Eduardo's right leg that may have casued him to fall so let's not attack him he's gone through enough the last thing he needs is for people to start hating on him hell even some Hrvati hate him because he's not "Croatian he's from Brazil" to those people I just have to say you can't choose where your born but you can choose where you die. I can't stand people like that because then I guess becuase I'm born in America it makes me less of a Croat somehow. Anyway dive or not let's not be like the British media they always make harsh criticism towrds there players that's why when under pressure they play like s**t. Oh and no he doesn't deserve a one match ban hell for all we know he didn't dive he could of just caught his footing wrong and fell.
I'm with you Petar. Personally, I think Eduardo should be suspended a match. If the consequences for play acting or diving were harsher, players would think twice about next time.
"Leave all the childish little games to the Portuguese and Italians"
I'm not familiar with the Portuguese league or their players, but you are on point with the Italians..
Just check out Gilardino dive… unbelievable.
I HATE when our player dive or play act. It cheapens our brand of football. Leave all the childish little games to the Portuguese and Italians.