Coaches slam referee Ivanov for handling of second-round match

Jun 26, 2006, 0:36 GMT

Nuremburg - Dutch coach Marco van Basten and Portugal's Luiz Felipe Scolari both criticized referee Valentin Ivanov for his handling of their ill-tempered second-round match at the World Cup on Sunday.

The Russian sent four players off, booked eight others and showed 20 cards in all, a record for a World Cup match, as Portugal edged into the last eight with a 1-0 win.

While Scolari praised his players for their spirit in holding on to set up a clash with England, Van Basten was disgusted with the referee for spoiling the game.

'It's a pity that the referee in such an important game should make these kind of decisions, Van Basten said.

'It is a pity that in the second half so little football was played.

'At half-time, I told my boys to be careful but it often happens that when your opponents get a red card they try to get back at you. That's what happened and we lost the one-man advantage.

'Every minute there was a foul with the referee whistling so we weren't able to play football.'

Scolari agreed that the referee had been over-zealous, at best.

'There were excesses on both sides (but) a few situations were contradictory, especially the red card to Deco,' he said.

Many of the problems began after the Dutch failed to return the ball to Portugal after Ricardo Carvalho had been injured making blocking a goal-bound shot just after the 70-minute mark.

Deco lost his head and was sent off for two booking inside five minutes while Portugal captain Luis Figo, who had earlier been lucky not to be sent off for a head-butt on Mark van Bommel, made the most of a challenge from Khalid Boulahrouz, who was sent off for a second yellow card.

'Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek,' Scolari said. 'But Figo isn't Jesus.'