If there's one thing about the World Cup that really irritates me it's the nauseating sanctimony one has to endure from FIFA (and other guardians of footballing piety) whenever a scuffle/altercation/melee breaks out on the pitch.

The words "disgrace", "shame", and "farce" were bandied about following the (highly entertaining) Portugal v Holland kick-fest, and there’s a similar (or perhaps greater) level of tut-tutting going on as we speak RE: the rather brief (and amusing) brawl at the end of the Germany v Argentina ¼ final.

Whoever provoked the altercation, only Leandro Cufre (an unused substitute) seems to have been guilty of anything other than goading, shouting, and a wee bit of shoving. While he was captured on camera kicking Mertesacker in - as ESPN euphemistically put it - "the midriff" (see below), he was subsequently given a (wholly justifiable) red card, so appropriate punishment was meted out.

Fair play to (Mr. Happy-Party-Time) Jurgen Klinsmann for making light of (and contextualising) the whole thing:

If you go all the way to a penalty shoot-out someone can lose control for a moment, maybe some words are said. But you just forget about it. This happens in football because of the emotion. For us it is no big deal.

Try telling the humourless FIFA autocrats that Jurgen…