Galaxy’s Nigel de Jong likely to get stiff penalty after studs-up tackle [Video]

The Galaxy will be going to Houston on Friday and they’re likely to be traveling there without midfielder Nigel de Jong, who is almost certain to be suspended by Major League Soccer’s disciplinary committee for a studs-up tackle on Portland’s Darlington Nagbe in the 73rd minute of Sunday’s 1-1 draw at the StubHub Center.

Nagbe was stretchered off the field and needed a wheelchair to get to the dressing room after the game. However, referee Allen Chapman punished De Jong with a yellow card, instead of a straight red, for the blow to Nagbe’s left ankle.

The Portland midfielder was scheduled to be evaluated Monday.

The MLS, which has promised to crack down on dangerous play this season, could suspend De Jong for multiple games, which would be a stiff blow to a Galaxy team already missing five starters to injury. But a De Jong suspension would be of little consolation to the Timbers. In the last two weeks Portland has seen two opponents suspended after the fact for rough fouls. The Timbers didn’t win either of those games.

“Some of those referees are giving the reds right in the game, and we seem to get them after, which doesn’t help us,” said Portland Coach Caleb Porter, who saw the Galaxy tie the game on an own goal 11 minutes after Nagbe went out.

De Jong came to the Galaxy this winter with a well-deserved reputation for physical play. In one seven-month stretch in 2010, he broke the legs of two opponents and delivered a studs-up kick to the chest of Spain’s Xabi Alonso in the World Cup final. That led a Spanish website to rank him among the 10 dirtiest players in the world.

Former U.S. national team midfielder Stuart Holden, one of the players who had a leg broken by De Jong, was in the Fox Sports broadcast booth Sunday and was not gentle in his remarks.

“I’m seeing this challenge first-hand on Darlington Nagbe and it makes me feel sick. Because I know what Darlington Nagbe is going through,” said Holden, who missed six weeks with a fractured fibula after De Jong clipped him in a friendly before the 2010 World Cup. “We saw him sitting there. He had the towel over his head. We saw his body mannerism and that’s a man that knows he’s done something serious.

“I don’t want to speculate what it is, but I know it’s not good. ... 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.”

De Jong, who apologized to Nagbe as the Portland player was wheeled off the field Sunday, said he didn’t consider the play to be dirty.

“It was a ball that came my way. It was 50-50. Normally I always have those balls,” he said. “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.

“Unfortunately, I caught him.”

MLS and PRO, the Professional Referees Organization, have made punishing rough play a priority, sometimes with unintended consequences. Nine days ago in Vancouver, for example, the Whitecaps’ Matias Laba was given a red card for a challenge against the Galaxy’s Mike Magee, an expulsion even the Galaxy considered harsh. Afterward, Coach Bruce Arena said the officials needed to come up with a consistent interpretation of what constitutes a red-card foul.

But Peter Walton, the MLS chief of officials, backed the foul on a conference call with reporters, saying that “if players continue making such challenges, referees will continue making such decisions.”

Chapman didn’t do that Sunday.

In a TV interview Sunday, Magee was asked about De Jong’s tackle.

“Any time you see someone get hit studs-up, you’re not happy about it,” he said. “It’s my teammate, so I’d love to defend him, but the game can do without those kind of tackles.”