As always, I barely know enough about soccer to fill a Tweet, but I like to think that I’m perceptive enough to tell when an athlete is completely full of horse doodies. Tottenham didn’t need much help in defeating FC Dnipro 3-1 last night to advance to the Last 16 of the Europa League, but Jan Vertonghen decided to do what any good teammate would do and pretend that he was hit with a heat-seeking missile so he could get an opposing player ejected from the game. In a quick and seemingly harmless exchange, the Spurs defender suddenly grabbed his face and dropped to the ground like a child in a fire drill, as he looked to have been coping with an agonizing pain.
The culprit, it would appear, was Dnipro’s Roman Zozulya, who was guilty because he was standing closest to Vertonghen when his skull was shattered into a billion pieces by a horrifying attack. Zozulya received a red card and the boot for his actions, and he was absolutely furious. He should have been even more furious, because Vertonghen’s “injury” was a total crock of crap.
It’s a shame that the Academy Awards are on Sunday, because Vertonghen deserves to be recognized on the grandest stage for this acting job.