Adebayor 4. Adebayor 57, Di Maria 72, Ronaldo 87
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What a stupid, stupid, stupid footballer!
Peter Crouch sent himself off.
Two crazy tackles six minutes apart earned Crouch two yellow cards.
So Spurs had to play 75 minutes with 10 men. And the 10 men lost 4-0.
Big shock as the game started : Aaron Lennon felt ill in the tunnel and didn\’t start.
Jenas replaced him.
That huge blow left Gareth Bale playing wide right at first.
Corner in the fourth minute, Adebayor header went past Modric on the post. What a soft goal ! Then Crouch made a silly tackle on Ramos. got booked, made an even crazier lunge at Marcelo,
German ref Felix Brych had to show a red card.
Long throw by Gareth Bale found Rafael van der Vaart in the box, the Dutchman chested the ball, and Carvalho\’s challenge from behind was not a wholly obvious foul. This veteran bandit is a master of the disguised half-foul that refs cannot really be sure about. If the ref could see the replay, he’d give a penalty.
Even now, you thought : Crouch\’s red card is far more important than the goal.
Being a man down is far worse than being a goal down.
Then Bale got onto a diagonal ball from Dawson but fired into the side-netting.
In 57, Spurs dawdled and allowed a short corner to find the unmarked Marcelo, who crossed to the unmarked Adebayor, who aimed his header sweetly into the net for 2-0.
In the first half Di Maria had a shot and you thought : he\’s no Arjen Robben.
Then, in 73, the gangling Argentine hit a phenomenal left-foot bender that flew high inside the far post. That superb strike put Spurs out of the Champions League.
Sub Kaka hit a cleverly probing cross that found Ronaldo, whose volley went through the dodgy Gomes for 4-0 .
An hour before the game a friend told me that the Spurs coaching staff believed that anything worse than 0-2 would be irretrievable.
Spurs were hammered but not disgraced.
They lost Lennon before the game, then lost Crouch, but kept the score down to 1-0 for 53 more minutes. But fatigue set in. Blame kamikaze Crouch for that.
Jose Mourinho’s pressing tactics worked a treat, especially in the second half.
He said, “Eleven against eleven, the match would be much better.â€