Bundesliga - Day 21: Action and Reaction.

VfL Wolfsburg - Hertha BSC Berlin 0:0
Arminia Bielefeld - MSV Duisburg 0:2
Bayer Leverkusen - FC Schalke 04 1:0
Borussia Dortmund - FC Hansa Rostock 1:0
Eintracht Frankfurt - Werder Bremen 1:0
VfB Stuttgart - Karlsruher SC 3:1
FC Bayern Bayern - Hamburger SV -:-
1.FC Nürnberg - FC Energie Cottbus -:-
VfL Bochum - Hannover 96 2:1

The underlying theme for this weekend's round of Bundesliga action seemed to have been foul play. In a reanactment of the 2006 World Cup final Bremen's Diego (as Zinedine Zidane) and Frankfurt's Kyrigiakos (as Marco Matterazzi) tried to stage one of the best remakes in football history. Diego seemed to have been the target of numerous fair and unfair attacks by the Frankfurt defense, when he was downed by the Greek defender who then told the Brazilian midfielder "fuck you and stand up". This caused Diego to snap and the himself mowed down Kyrigiakos with a fine body check. Without a doubt this was a red card and with only 10 men on the pitch Bremen lost the match 1-0.
So much for the story, what happened the next day was that most of the media were trying to find excuses for Diego's foul play which I find highly astonishing. Here is a player who commits a foul on an opponent and is sent off. A completely normal occurence on a football pitch. But because this was one by a player who is considered to be the best player in the German Bundesliga (and I totally agree with that) everyone is trying to defend him no matter what.
I wonder what they would have said to Mario Gomez who was constantly harrassed by his "shadow" Maik Franz in the southern derby between Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. While the fans were trying to burn down the building before and during the match Gomez and Franz were going at each other with all they had in their repertoire. Gomez went ahead and scored the lead for Stuttgart in a game which Stuttgart went on to win 3-1. But it was only after the game when he told reporters what he thought of his opposition in Karlsruhe's defense. "I respect all of my opponents, but not this asshole. He's just an unfair sportsman".

Still all this can be dismissed as rather trivial when you read and maybe see (I won't post any pictures or youtube movies since this is just too much) what happened to Eduardo, Arsenal's Brazilian-Croatian striker. In a match against Birmingham City he was mowed down after only two minutes by Martin Taylor who with his lunge tackle might have broken everything into peices what was once in Eduardo's foot. This was one of the most brutal fouls I have ever seen and the pictures in the British tabloid papers look simply disgusting. One can only hope that Eduardo will be able to play football again in the future. This had nothing to do with sports and is rather an assault case for a law court.