I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a game that was more, for lack of a better term, fucked-up… than that contest between Portugal and The Netherlands yesterday. In the second half, as I was watching, I was thinking, “I’m not sure what this is, but I have absolutely no intention of changing the channel.”

It was that weird. It was like the Eagles/Bears fog bowl in ’88. I’m not saying it was foggy, but it gave that same kind of feeling, like “Well, you don’t see this everyday.” 16 yellow cards were issued, to go along with four reds. Weird shit was happening all over the place. There was absolutely no institutional control of anything happening on the field. It looked like someone walked into a juvenile detention center, threw a soccer ball down, put half the kids in red shirts and the other half in white, and just said, “Hey, have at it, you little bastards.”

Some quotes…

“If you talk about fair play, you should watch yourself first. They were a bit more experienced with all these tricks and all this time wasting.” – Netherlands coach Marco van Basten

“FIFA talks about fair play. There was no fair play.” – Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari

“It is sad there was so little soccer played in the second half.” – van Basten

“It is a pity the referee made a mess of this game.” – van Basten

“The refereeing wasn’t up to the level of the teams. Today certainly wasn’t a fair-play day.” – FIFA president Sepp Blatter

That’s the president of FIFA there, a man who’s reputation is at stake with the quality of the officiating. Imagine how bad a crew of NBA officials would have to be before David Stern said, “Yeah, OK, that was fucked up.” And the truly unique thing about it was that both sides were equally furious with the officiating. Congratulations, Russian ref Valentin Ivanov. That’s a rare feat.

And it should’ve been a beautiful game; a real Joga Bonita sort of affair. Both sides are immensely skilled. And I’m not even saying the game was bad… you could even make the argument that it was better. There was violence out there. And with two players from each team sent off, there was pleny of room for everyone to operate. Scoring chances were not rare. But it is kind of a shame that there wasn’t much soccer played in the 2nd half, because I think both of these teams are/were legitimate Cup contenders.

And I still think Portugal’s going to beat England, even without Deco and Costinha.