Sampson needs a reality check

SPEAKING before FIFA’s Ballon d’Or ceremony, where he was nominated for women’s coach of the year, England manager Mark Sampson made a familiar plea. ‘We want women’s football to be honestly evaluated,’ he said. ‘We want people to criticise and assess us like any other sport.’ Is he sure about that? In a recent interview with The Independent, Laura Bassett talked about the reaction to the own goal that knocked England out of the 2015 World Cup. It was not one that David Beckham, Wayne Rooney or Phil Neville, for instance, would recognise. Bassett had just returned from a free holiday to St Lucia, paid for by Kuoni to ‘cheer her up’. Yet an honest evaluation of her mistake would acknowledge that England lost possession sloppily, and Bassett was slow to recover and her technique was poor, attempting to clear with the wrong foot. That fall-out is interesting, though. The

Independent won’t have paid for access, but employees at the Football Association certainly did attempt to negotiate some fee on Bassett’s behalf for interviews in the aftermath. And while Bassett does get spiteful comments on social media, she puts the ratio at 1:15. The other 14 are invariably supportive. It is not a world that England’s male footballers inhabit. Not that the abuse they receive for an error — Beckham was hanged in effigy after 1998 — is appropriate, just an illustration of two worlds. Sampson is right to crave respect; but he should be careful what he wishes for with the rest of it. Nobody will get a Caribbean bonus for an own goal in France this summer. Desert island exile, maybe.