Portugal manager Roberto Martinez felt Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s red card was \u2018harsh\u2019, deriding his counterpart\u2019s pre-match comments as leaving a \u2018sour taste\u2019.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s 2-0 win in the penultimate World Cup qualifier was overshadowed by the Portugal captain\u2019s sending off for a shove on Dara O\u2019Shea on the hour mark.<\/p>\n
Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson has pleaded publicly beforehand for the Swedish referee not to be as influenced as the reverse fixture, last month\u2019s late 1-0 win the Icelander claimed Ronaldo \u2018controlled\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a bit harsh,\u201d said Martinez afterwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cCristiano was being grabbed and pushed for the entire 60 minutes. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an elbow but we accept it. He cares and was frustrated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only bad taste in my mouth the Ireland coach talked about the influence on referees and there\u2019s a big centre-half on the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cCristiano has won many games for us and we\u2019ve to ensure we win Sunday\u2019s game without him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ronaldo engaged in verbals with the Irish manager while after mock clapping the jeering home crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe complimented me for putting pressure on the referee,\u201d said Hallgr\u00edmsson.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, it had nothing to do with me. It was his action on the pitch. Nothing to do with me. Unless I got into his head.\u201d \u201cI think we spoke enough when he came off. Just a moment of silliness from him, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portugal manager Roberto Martinez felt Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s red card was \u2018harsh\u2019, deriding his counterpart\u2019s pre-match comments as leaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,2539,5782,43,5783],"class_list":{"0":"post-138483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fai","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-league-of-ireland","12":"tag-local-soccer","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-premiership"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}