Nigel de Jong's tackle was awful, but as Scott French explains, seeing it in person didn't produce the same firestorm as seeing it on TV – even from Darlington Nagbe's teammates.

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CARSON, Calif. – The portion of the world awake late Sunday for the LA Galaxy’s clash with the Portland Timbers watched in horror as Dutch assassin Nigel de Jong took down another foe with a brutal tackle that, surely, will garner a lengthy suspension once MLS' disciplinary committee has spoken.

De Jong's studs-up crunch into Darlington Nagbe's left leg in the 73th minute of the 1-1 draw at StubHub Center wasn't much of a shock, given de Jong's lengthy history of injury-causing tackles, and it drew an immediate response from the Fox Sports broadcasters working the game – including Stuart Holden, whose leg de Jong broke six years ago – and ignited a firestorm on social media.

De Jong was assessed a yellow card by referee Allen Chapman; he apologized to Nagbe after the game, and he expressed regrets about how it played out when he spoke to media outside the Galaxy's locker room.

“It was a ball that came my way. It was 50-50, and, normally, I always have those balls,” de Jong said. “But I went over the ball and caught the ball a little bit and caught most of his ankle. It was a pity, it was never my intention to hurt him. He's a good kid, as well, and I said that after the game, as well, to him.

It's a pity, but that's football, as well." - Nigel de Jong

“It's a pity, but that's football, as well. It was never my intention, and when a ball comes in that situation, you always go for it 100 percent. Unfortunately, I caught him.”

His words have done little to quell the damning cries. The debate isn't whether he should be suspended, but for how long. Some voices are calling for the Galaxy to take responsibility and get rid of the tattooed midfielder. The Timbers chastised LA over Twitter.

Hey @LAGalaxy, last year this acct justified a RC on Ridgewell w/a pic of a bruise. Any pithy commentary on De Jong? Are you even surprised? — Portland Timbers (@TimbersFC) April 11, 2016

@LAGalaxy Sorry we don't find signing dirty players funny. But have at it. — Portland Timbers (@TimbersFC) April 11, 2016

Many of us sitting in the StubHub press box wondered, at least initially, what the fuss was all about.

De Jong is one of international soccer's most feared and hated hard men, a defensive center midfielder who pushes the boundaries of a quality – “bite” – that every team covets, and he's highly valued not just for this skill, if you will, but as an on-field general who protects his back four while serving as a constant outlet to keep the ball moving and the attack building.

STEVE DAVIS Nigel de Jong's tackle another sign that MLS needs to evolve

We've all seen hard tackles in MLS, some of them criminal – Brian Mullan's attack on Steve Zakuani still draws shudders – but at first glance, and then a look at the replay on the monitors, I didn't think it was a yellow-card offense. I wasn't sure it was even a foul. And others among my colleagues thought similarly.

It happened quickly in real time, a midfield confrontation with both players seeming to lunge into the same space, neither with full control of the ball. Contact is made, and Nagbe goes down.

Now, Nagbe had gone to the turf twice in the previous 11 minutes, first when sliced down by Jelle Van Damme and then six minutes later as he leapt for a ball and appeared to be clipped by Sebastian Lletget. The first was a professional foul, no question, the second much less egregious (even if it left Nagbe, clutching his foot, in worse pain), and now, perhaps, the collision with de Jong had exacerbated whatever had happened to his foot.

There was some pushing, primarily between Diego Chara and Mike Magee, and de Jong seemed to complain to Chapman about the card, his second caution in five MLS matches. But there was not an overwhelming reaction by players on the field. Nagbe was stretchered off the field – he would head to the locker room after the game in a wheelchair – and play resumed. It didn't seem all that major at all.

Darlington Nagbe has a sprained ankle and contusion. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports)

Then the Twittersphere exploded, with condemnations of de Jong and of Chapman for letting the Dutchman stay on the field. I paid it only some mind – this sort of thing is hardly new – and then I saw a Tweet from MLS' Matthew Doyle, someone whose opinion I trust: “That should be a 3-4 game suspension at least. Awful challenge. Hope Nagbe's leg isn't broken.”

The game is still going on, so my focus and that of my colleagues is on the here and now. If there's anything to all of this, it'll be the focal point of the postgame interviews. And it wasn't.

The first question to Timbers coach Caleb Porter was about Nagbe's condition, and he said they were “still evaluating it.” He then was asked about his team's defensive performance, the shift to a 4-2-3-1 alignment, Chris Klute's debut, and Dairon Asprilla's absence, and the final query was about referees and red cards – there have been so many ejections in the first five weeks of the season – and how it seemed likely de Jong would receive a retroactive red card and suspension, which would be the third time that's happened this year following a foul against a Portland player.

“I guess that's just the luck of the draw, right?” Porter said. “Some of those referees are giving the reds right in the game, and we seem to get them after, which doesn't help us. And you got a couple guys that are injured because of it and could be even more injured.

“This is one in particular that you look back at some of those tackles. I understand that there's a message that referees want to send – well, we better start sending it then. Because they didn't send it today with some of the tackles that were in that game. So when are we sending it? Just some games? And that’s the big thing. It's, like, if we're going to have an initiative to send a message on tough tackles, well, then let's do it. Let’' do it every game. Not some games.”

Bruce Arena wasn't even asked about the incident in his news conference, and it was the last question posed to de Jong, almost as an afterthought. It didn't come up in conversations with other Galaxy players.

It wasn't much more heated outside Portland's locker room. There was concern about Nagbe's condition, complaints that the foul warranted a red card, but the closest thing to outright condemnation was Jermaine Taylor's assessment that the de Jong's attack “was pretty bad.”

“I think they got some repeated fouls that the referee didn't take full control of, in terms of managing the game, and that's one of the things leading up to the foul on Darlington Nagbe,” said Taylor, a Timbers defender. “There had been some reckless tackles on the pitch -- if they had cautioned a couple of guys earlier, I mean, that would've set the tone and calmed the game and settled the game, preventing Nagbe from even getting the injury. So it's just, I think, from the referee's standpoint, bad officiating and controlling the game.”

Television viewers saw much that we – and Chapman – didn't: repeated replays, including those from an angle that made clear de Jong had gone over the ball and, with studs showing, into Nagbe's left leg, as clear as a red card can be.

They heard the analysts condemn de Jong, with Holden, who has that history with de Jong, proclaiming that the challenge “makes me feel sick, because I know what Darlington Nagbe is going through. ... There is absolutely no excuse for that type of challenge. We don't need it in the game. It's horrific. It's horrible. And he's going to get retroactive punishment.”

And, the oddest of it all, they got Magee's postgame interview with Rob Stone and Holden, in which the Galaxy attacker, seeing the replay for the first time, says that it's “not a great tackle,” that “any time you see someone get hit studs-up, you're not happy about it,” that he would “love to defend [de Jong], but the game can do without those kind of tackles,” and, ultimately, it's “hard for me to even comment on it, really, seeing the video and being as close to Stu [Holden] as I am and knowing what happened to him. I'm kind of at a loss for words.”

Deadlines are deadlines, so many of us didn't hear these words or see the better-angled replays until the early hours of Monday morning. My initial judgment, clearly, was off-base: That was a red card, and de Jong should receive a suspension.

But it's also not the “horror” tackle it's been portrayed to be in media around the globe. It's an ugly tackle, sure, one that deserves penalty, but we've seen just as bad many times and far worse on occasion. This seems to be about De Jong's history -- the cleat to Xabi Alonso's chest during the 2010 World Cup final, Holden's and Hatem Ben Arfa's broken legs, plenty more -- as much as what happened to Nagbe.

The good news: Reports from Portland are that X-rays were negative and an MRI shows an ankle sprain and contusion. De Jong's sanction is forthcoming.

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