Aston Villa's Emile Heskey angered by Porto antics
Aug 1 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Birmingham Mail
EMILE Heskey last night warned his team-mates to prepare for a season of gamesmanship in Europe after becoming the victim of an ugly encounter with Porto.
The £3 million striker will miss tomorrow’s showpiece Peace Cup final against Juventus after being red-carded for a face to face confrontation with Bruno Alves.
Heskey admits he did wrong but was severely critical of Porto’s niggly style of play.
“It was a niggly and silly game,” he said.
“Whenever we got close to them they’d fall on the floor and the referee would give a free-kick, but when they booted us up in the air we got nothing.
“There was no consistency there. We’re going to be playing in the Europa League and we are going to have to get used to coming up against teams and players like this.
“Sometimes throwing yourself on the floor and winning a free-kick is a good ploy because you could be under pressure and you could slow the game down.
“I shouldn’t have done anything I should have just carried on playing.
“I’ve not had many sendings-off, probably two or three in my career, I don’t want to go over and over the incident again, people will see for themselves what happened.
