Video: Japan’s Brazilian Defender Takes Out Didier Drogba – Deliberate Or Accidental?

Ollie Irish

4th, June 2010

8 Comments

By Ollie Irish

Conspiracy theorists, start your blogs…

At the start of the video you see Japan defender Marcus Tulio Tanaka collide with Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba. This is the tackle that is set to keep Drogba out of the World Cup.

Considering it was supposed to be a friendly, it appears that Tanaka went in with reckless abandon. Indeed, the challenge reminds me of a less intense version of the infamous Schumacher/Battiston incident at the 1982 World Cup.

It gets more interesting: Tanaka plays for Japan but he was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ivory Coast is also in Brazil’s World Cup group, a group so difficult that it has earned the traditional ‘Group of Death‘ label.

Hmm. Hmmm. Surely no one from the Brazil camp gave orders to Tanaka to go out and injure the Ivory Coast’s most dangerous player. Surely not.

I gotta say, it looks completely intentional to me. Shame on Tanaka.

Posted in World Cup

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8 Comments

  1. oller says:

    That is a ridiculous challenge in a friendly.

    What a douchebag. I wonder if the chelsea fans are going to come out of the woodwork again, they love a good death threat.

  2. Ollie says:

    Yep, agreed

  3. Padraig McKeon says:

    Leading with a knee at chest height, both feet off the ground – nailed on red card except it happened so quick a ref might not realise what it was

  4. Dave Macbeth says:

    Who’s comentating? Jabba the Hutt?

  5. Eboue says:

    Did Japan just score another fucking own goal?
    And yeah the tackle looks a bit deliberate

  6. Gill Man says:

    Nob, Drogba that is.

  7. zhaba says:

    wat a cunt he is . just made world cup less intrstng. deliberate or not.

  8. Rodrigo says:

    I think it was completely deliberal, but I don’t think he had Brazil in mind. My guess is that he is just a butcher.

    Definitely enters on my Butchers Squad, along with people like Argentina’s Alejandro Mancuso, Brazil’s Domingos (prolly unknown outside here) and Italia’s Marco Materazzi.

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