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15 yellow cards, 39 fouls and an English referee: The glorious insanity of the Battle of Stuttgart
Germany and Spain’s Euro 2024 quarter-final promised silk but was as much about cynicism and uncompromising challenges
A player kicked out of the game after eight minutes, long periods played to the soundtrack of cacophonous aggrieved whistles from fans of both sides and more cards than your last three birthdays combined. The only thing missing from this fierce and furious match was a full-blown fistfight. Will 15 bookings and a red card do instead?
Tough afternoon for English referee Anthony Taylor but he might have avoided the carnage that followed had he stood for less nonsense from Toni Kroos in the opening minutes. The midfielder, playing his final game, took the idea of going down fighting too literally.
Germany’s tactics were clear almost from kick-off, target Spain and test the assumption that they don’t like it up ‘em. Kroos correctly judged that Taylor was employing the traditional British wrinkle to the laws early on: do what you fancy, I will not be making any rash bookings.
At least one of Kroos’s two challenges on Pedri merited a yellow. He trailed a leg to trip the Barcelona player as he attempted to break after three minutes. Ilkay Gundogan then had a nibble before Kroos trod on Pedri’s foot cruelly from the free-kick that resulted. That was the end of Pedri’s involvement, substituted for Dani Olmo and Germany left free to continue roughhousing the Spaniards left standing.
Spain did their bit, too. It became a tactical fouling and over-reaction masterclass that will be studied by future generations, curious about how an ostensibly fun sport can become deeply unpleasant.
So much of the modern entertainment industry is built on successfully monetising a franchise. It took 18 years but we finally have a worthy sequel to the Battle of Nuremberg between Portugal and the Netherlands at the 2006 World Cup. Here is how the Battle of Stuttgart unfolded, the tale of 15 yellow cards (and one red).
13 minutes: Antonio Rudiger
Taylor’s soft-touch approach lasts less than a quarter of an hour when the first card is produced for a trip on Dani Olmo. A tackle which would keep Rudiger out of the semi-final, if Germany were playing in it.
28 minutes: David Raum
Dani Carvajal earns an honorary GCSE in Drama for his reaction to obstruction from Raum, a sudden and dramatic lowering of the threshold of what constitutes a booking from Taylor.
29 minutes: Robin Le Normand
A minute later, the Spain defender fails to heed Taylor’s sudden switch from permissive ‘legalised crime’ refereeing to a hardline ‘Sir Keir Starmer as head of CPS’ approach. Gundogan passes him and Le Normand clips his heels and tugs at his shirt cynically to stop the attack. Is now out of Spain’s semi.
56 minutes: Robert Andrich
Substitute, who is not best-placed for subtly avoiding trouble given his current choice of pink hair, manages 11 gloriously un-booked minutes. Clumsy foul.
67 minutes: Toni Kroos
Olmo heads for a minimally-guarded German penalty box and Kroos has seen enough, bundling him over. Taylor has seen enough now too, and finally produces a farewell yellow card for Kroos.
73 minutes: Maximilian Mittelstadt
Excellent dedication to the art of fouling here, as Mittelstadt chases Ferran Torres for practically the length of the pitch on a Spain counter before forcing him to the turf.
74 minutes: Ferran Torres
How quickly the fouled becomes the fouler. Jamal Musiala looks dangerous as he attempts an attack. Torres grabs him round the waist to snuff out the danger. Good to add a rugby tackle to the game’s illustrated dictionary of fouls.
82 minutes: Unai Simon
Finally punished for timewasting, which has been infuriating Germany’s team and fans. An infringement English referees tend to tolerate from goalkeepers until the final 10 minutes of a game. Spooked Simon gives ball away immediately and is nearly lobbed from long range by Florian Wirtz.
90 minutes: Nico Schlotterbeck
Dissent. Is he even on the pitch? No, he is not. We have reached a strange new territory where even the unused substitutes are being told off for talking back.
94 minutes: Florian Wirtz
Marc Cucurella tries to hare forward. Wirtz stops him with a clothesline move around his neck. That is not allowed.
100 minutes: Dani Carvajal
Deliberate handball. You can’t do that either.
110 minutes: Rodri
A shirt-pull on Thomas Muller. A sense players are now being booked because they feel left out.
113 minutes: Deniz Undav
Another unused sub goes into the book for dissent. Let us hope the pitchside audio recording of this match is never made public, it would contravene the obscene publications act.
120+1 minutes: Fabian Ruiz
Naughty goal celebrations. Probably. No one is quite sure.
120+5 minutes Dani Carvajal
Another of the neck-based fouls which seem to have become all the rage, this time on Musiala. Carvajal’s second yellow in 25 minutes, which finally gives the game the red card its crimes obviously merit. An appropriate conclusion.
And finally, that was all. Well, there was also a yellow card reported for Alvaro Morata initially, in the same minute as Ruiz, although no one was sure what it was for or whether it had actually happened. Even the usually perfect data-collectors had lost their heads by this point. The non-yellow has already been rescinded.
Germany were reduced to wrecks on the turf by the end, but barely would have got a bench together for the semi-final had they reached it such was their number of suspensions. Spain march on, slightly injured, and probably falling to the turf screaming every time one of their team-mates accidentally leans on them.