England Stumble and the Press Pounce: A Review

There are two things that the English press love and that’s scandal and failure and unfortunately for the England team and in particular Robert Green, they handed the media an easy nights work on Saturday.

Images of Robert Green scrambling desperately to reach the ball that had eluded his grip moments earlier were splashed across the front and back pages of most newspapers on Sunday morning, as he became easy fodder for the red tops.

Usually in this situation the press is clear who’s to blame as they seemingly collectively agree on a fall guy for the nation to vent their anger towards, but this was not the case on Sunday.

The tabloids were keen to condemn and did so with great hyperbole, but without a uniform opinion.

The Daily Star opted to attack and ran with the vivid headline “ROB-BISH! Clown Green drops us in brown stuff” while The Sun elected to throw in the towel at the first hurdle and denounce their citizenship.

“NEW boss, new hope, nice new shirts for a fresh adventure as the World Cup breaks new ground.

But the same old England…

It never takes them long to bring their fans back down to earth and leave them wondering why they were deluded enough to believe they could actually win this thing.”

Despite the critical mauling of Green and the nation’s World Cup aspirations there remained an uncertainty amongst the tabloids as to their true feelings on the nights events and this was exemplified perfectly by The Star.

Having claimed on the back page that England were now planted firmly in the brown stuff by Green’s Teflon-like grip of the ball, there should surely be a uniformity of opinion reflected on the front page, but seemingly the two departments hadn’t shared their views with each other and as a result the paper conveyed a confusing mixed message.

The front page ran with the optimistic “DON’T PANIC. We WILL still bring Cup home” and we’re somehow going to do so whilst knee deep in our own shit.

The broadsheets retained a degree of perspective in their analysis and also steered clear of quite the same amount of sensationalism, but most evidently there was an element of subdued embarrassment.

Much of the focus fell on the critical analysis of Green’s selection in the starting XI, seemingly with the intention of relegating the fact that the nation drew with an impotent looking USA team.

There was little mention of England’s stunted and uninspiring performance, which was put into sharp focus on Sunday evening by Germany’s controlled demolition of a similarly ineffective opposition.

Perhaps understandably there was an air of indifference surrounding the result, as after all it is England’s first game of the tournament and as long as we better USA’s results against Algeria and Slovenia, then we will still qualify as group winners.

This embarrassed indifference was best reflected by Dizzee Rascal who was chosen as a guest for his obvious football knowledge, experience and verbal dexterity on James Corden’s hideous celebrity bum-kissing luvvy-fest of an entertainment show.

When questioned about his feelings after England’s match he replied “I was on the edge of my seat all game…I thought we had ‘em…I thought we had ‘em…but next game innit”.

Quite Mr Rascal, onwards and upwards, or at least I think that’s what he’s trying to say.

Posted By Dan Mobbs - Monday June 14, 2010.
Tags: World Cup 2010, England