Soccer teams stop trying, just stand there for 3 minutes to make sure they tie

With both teams guaranteed to advance to the semifinals of the under-21 European Championships with a draw, Sweden and Portugal essentially stopped playing in the 90th minute to ensure a 1-1 tie.

Portugal had a 1-0 lead late in the game when Sweden's Simon Tibbling tied it up at 1-1 in the 89th minute. After that, both teams stopped pushing forward. Portugal held the ball near the center circle for all of stoppage time, passing it back and forth now and then, and Sweden stood around and let the clock run out.

After the game, Sweden's Victor Nilsson Lindelöf acknowledged to the Swedish newspaper Expressen that after his team's late equalizing goal he talked to a Portugal player about playing for a tie.

"I just told Bernardo Silva that we would take it easy," he said.

It makes total rational sense for both teams to play for a draw in that situation, but that doesn't make it any less absurd to watch. Here's what it looked like (via Metro):

A user on Reddit uploaded a sped-up version of the final three minutes. The teams barely move around after a Portugal throw-in at the beginning of stoppage time:

This is about as close as Sweden got to pressing Portugal in the last three minutes:

With the draw, Sweden and Italy finished tied on points in the group standings, but because Sweden beat Italy 2-1 earlier in the tournament, it advanced and Italy was eliminated:

This sort of scenario is relatively common in international competitions, but rarely are teams so blatant about it.

After the game, Italy's Stefano Sturaro tweeted, "Dogs celebrate on the corpses of lions, thinking they've won, but lions remain lions and dogs stay dogs."

The Italian media has accused the two teams of "cheating."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 12 awesome facts about WWE superstar Brock Lesnar