Tottenham were doing their best to settle down by clever passing in the centre of the field, but Real Madrid are pressing extremely hard and harrying Spurs whenever they try to get on the ball in the middle. We’ve already seen several mistakes by Tottenham’s central players, but they’ve been unpunished so far. What hasn’t gone unpunished, however, is Peter Crouch’s tackling - in an attempt to retrieve the ball from left back Marcelo, he’s gone in late with studs showing high, and the referee showed no hesitation in reaching for his second yellow card and dismissing the striker.
Real Madrid Vs. Tottenham Hotspur, 2011 UEFA Champions League: Peter Crouch Sent Off For Second Booking
It was an appalling challenge and a deserved booking - how Crouch will justify two of those in sixteen minutes is beyond me - and Spurs will now have to play the rest of the match with ten men and lose the big forward’s services for the return leg at White Hart Lane. It’s entirely possible that the London side has lost this tie in the first twenty minutes of the match. What a stupid, stupid tackle that was. We were expecting yellow cards to matter, but perhaps not this much.
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