In stoppage time, Cenk Tosun completed a seven-on-four counterattack. The players on the Turkish bench left the table to celebrate. The Turkish team won 2-1 and secured qualification for the knockout rounds.
It’s messy stuff, but that’s just the beginning of it. At the end of the frantic game, Romanian referee Istvan Kovac issued five yellow cards to extend the game. The record for the most cards won in a single match of the European Championship was set 20 minutes ago.
Of the 18 cards shown, 16 are yellow cards and 2 are red cards. The strangest thing is that 5 of these 18 players were given to players who were not on the field.
By a long shot, this was the dirtiest game in the history of the European Cup. So what happened?
The Czech team started well in this game. They used a man-to-man pressing system to interfere with Turkey’s excellent midfield skills.
Then came a setback: Anthony Ballack received a yellow card in the 11th minute. Kovac rightly punished the Fiorentina midfielder for dragging down left-back Feddi Cadioglu.
This should have been a cue for Ballack to play it safe and avoid dangerous tackles for the remainder of the game, but the 29-year-old did not do so.
In the 20th minute, Ballack cleverly got rid of Ismail Yuksek’s challenge and was quickly surrounded by two Turkish midfielders near the midfield line.
As the ball got further away from him and Hakan Calhanoglu closed in quickly, Ballack extended his left foot in a desperate attempt to catch the ball before Saleh Ozkan.
Ozkan won the match and Ballack got to his feet and dropped him into a heap. After initially handing the advantage to Turkey, Kovac equalized for a foul and handed Ballack a second yellow card – the earliest dismissal in European Cup history, breaking the record for former France defender Eric ·The record held by Abidal (24 minutes against Italy in the 2008 European Cup).
The decision divided pundits and commentators, with ITV’s Andros Townsend believing he was being treated harshly.
“This one is even more puzzling. He had the ball; he knocked it away,” Townsend said. “It was his follow-up that caught the Turkish player. You can always slow it down and freeze it, but in the end, he had the ball.
Regardless, a player as experienced as Ballack should know better than to take risks in midfield in a must-win game that already has a yellow card.
After Ozcan was booked in the 31st minute, the next card was dealt to Czech forward Patrick Schick, who was not on the field at all at the time. The Bayer Leverkusen man was booked for dissent and will miss the Czech Republic’s last-16 match if they advance, having picked up a yellow card earlier in the game.
Schick, the Czech Republic’s all-time leading scorer at the European Championships, was seen vehemently defending Ismail Juksek’s powerful challenge on Lucas Provod, which saw the latter tumble on the floor. Should have been booked, so he was warned.
Juksek won the ball fairly cleanly, but given the controversial nature of Ballack’s second yellow card, he may have had a point.
Minutes later, Juventus winger Kenan Yildiz received Turkey’s second yellow card of the night. After beating West Ham full-back Vladimir Coufal, Yildiz lost the ball to centre-back Robin Hranak. Yildiz threw a delicious challenge to Hranak, who tumbled dramatically.
If the referee had not given Yildiz a yellow card, there might have been a rebellion in the Czech dugout.
Between that decision and the real drama after the final whistle, Calhanoglu (who scored Turkey’s brilliant opener in the 51st minute), Mert Muldur, Witt Vitezslav Jaros, Lukas Cerv and substitute goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir all received yellow cards. Strong competition.
By the time stoppage time began at the end of the game, the European record for cards received in a single game had been easily broken (14 yellow cards and 1 red card, breaking the previous high of 10 cards). But after Tosun won the championship, the fun really began.
Turkey’s enthusiastic celebrations at the final whistle were too much for many of their players to bear as the Czechs made their way home. West Ham United’s Tomas Soucek was the first to take issue with Orkun Kokcu shaking his fist in the middle of the pitch.
Soon after, players and coaches on the sideline ran onto the field and joined the melee that broke out near the midfield line.
Victory Plzen forward Tomas Jory was then shown a red card, the Czech Republic’s second red card of the night, after he got into a physical altercation with Turkey’s No. 1 goalkeeper Mert Gunok.
As the referee struggled to control, he showed yellow cards to Soucek and Arda Guler.
From a football perspective, this game may have little impact. But because of its glorious lawlessness, especially in its dying moments, it now holds a special place in European history.
(Top photo: Christophe Simon/AFP via Getty Images)
