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.