In all honesty, Pepe and Coentrao have shown one of the worst displays of sportsmanship I have seen to date and I’m really angry about it. Pepe intentionally stepped on Messi. I don’t care if it was his hand or his fucking pinky, you don’t show that level of disrespect to a player who has done NOTHING wrong to you, especially if he’s on the ground. I’m glad that the madridistas I follow have some sense of respect for their rival team, but I’ve seen posts going around applauding him for this act. How thick can people get? This was lowly and nasty on Pepe’s behalf, especially considering how much I admired him before. I don’t know what sort of self-satisfaction he thought he was going to achieve by stepping on the current best player in the world, but all he’s truly gotten is a massive loss of respect from the football community.
And I don’t know if others missed it, but Coentrao wasn’t too lovely, either. I can look around for pictures later, but basically, he put a hand on Messi’s head as Messi was getting up as a friendly gesture, and then pushed him back to the ground. Now, I’m sure there has been plenty of pushing and shoving from both teams considering the level of rivalry they operate on, but feigning good sportsmanship and then stooping to that level is just dirty. And I’ve seen Madrid fans commend him for it. Were some people born with the complete inability to fathom what respect or sportsmanship is? Messi did nothing wrong to these two to have them stoop to that level of nastiness except play for a team that could possibly beat them at that point in time. This was saddening to see coming from two talented players.
