{"id":2251,"date":"2010-06-13T08:52:06","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T13:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2010\/06\/13\/leave-robert-green-alone-you-meanies\/"},"modified":"2010-06-13T08:52:44","modified_gmt":"2010-06-13T13:52:44","slug":"leave-robert-green-alone-you-meanies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2010\/06\/13\/leave-robert-green-alone-you-meanies\/","title":{"rendered":"Leave Robert Green alone, you meanies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/robert-green-fumble.jpg\" width=\"604\" height=\"374\" alt=\"Goalie Robert Green manages to not quite catch the ball\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nOkay, so it was a bitter disappointment that England could not win its first match in the Worldcup, especially against the USA, which should&#8217;ve been a piece of cake. And okay, so the goal that cost England victory was one of the classic bad goals that will be a staple of late night BBC 3 clip shows for decades to come, <em>but<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.co.uk\/news\/more?pz=1&#038;cf=all&#038;ned=uk&#038;cf=all&#038;ncl=dSHN4xxQ-3I74hMmyHOo2MozKD6iM\">it&#8217;s still wrong to blame Green for it<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\nThe goal wasn&#8217;t a mistake, it was an accident, something that has happened to better goalies than Green, one of those things you can&#8217;t really control. You stop the ball, it bounces awkwardly, you&#8217;re left staring as it bounces over the goal line: it happens.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nThe goal wouldn&#8217;t have been a problem if the English strikers at the other end hadn&#8217;t consistently failed to score after Gerrard&#8217;s beautiful six minute opener. There were chances enough, but both Hesky and Shaun Wright-Phillips shot straight at the keeper, which doesn&#8217;t help. Had there been evne one more English goal Green&#8217;s fumble wouldn&#8217;t have mattered.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nFinally, all the guff about Green looking nervous and vulnerable was only visible in hindsight: had the fumble not happened, would it have been noticed?\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nEnglish football fans and especially the press have a tendency to grasp at any flaw to predict England&#8217;s dooomed. This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of which Green is now the latest victim. Stop pressuring him and he might just make good his mistake..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, so it was a bitter disappointment that England could not win its first match in the Worldcup, especially against the USA, which should&#8217;ve been a piece of cake. And okay, so the goal that cost England victory was one of the classic bad goals that will be a staple of late night BBC 3 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[333],"tags":[1032,1033],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","tag-robert-green","tag-worldcup-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2252,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}