NO SIGN OF PANAMA HATS AS ENGLAND REACH FOR TIN HATS
THE mood inside the England camp remained largely positive here yesterday. Gareth Southgate was buoyant enough to declare his team as good as any at this World Cup in the build- up to tomorrow’s match with Panama. He just wasn’t entirely happy that everyone seemed to know what it was. Until Kyle Walker said that Steve Holland had apologised to the players for revealing his training notes to a phalanx of lenses on Thursday, nobody was sure.
But the manner in which England’s manager turned his sights on the media, suggesting journalists had in some way been unpatriotic for reporting what was scribbled on his assistant’s pad, suggested it must have been the line-up he claimed not to have even told his players is his plan for the game in Nizhny Novgorod.
If Marcus Rashford has indeed earned selection ahead of Raheem Sterling and Ruben Loftus-Cheek starts ahead of the injured Dele Alli, there should be cause for excitement. It is a side that should comfortably secure victory against a team most famous for hats — and with it ensure England’s safe passage to the last 16.
Southgate needs to concern himself less with the idea that Panama have some advantage because of reports in the British media.
The truth is that we cannot say with absolute certainty that Holland gave the game away. Not until FIFA print off the team sheets an hour before kick-off does anyone outside the England squad ever know if the line-ups published in the newspapers are correct.
Often they are, but one recalls a game under Roy Hodgson when nine of the names were in fact wrong. So the idea that an international coach bases his preparation on what he has read in a newspaper is frankly ridiculous.
Even when journalists have been able to watch a training session — and if the journalists have a view of the pitch because of poor security, so do opposition spies — it does not always follow that what they are seeing is the team.
Some managers mix things up even on the eve of a match. Sven Goran Eriksson often trained in formation and on one occasion at Southampton the session took place in full view of reporters. The following night, however, the deployment of both Ashley Cole and Wayne Bridge on England’s left flank came as a surprise.
Eriksson never seemed to mind when the correct line-up was published, and nor did Fabio Capello. Members of his staff would often try to offer some guidance to reporters keen to write match previews that offered some accurate insight ahead of the game. The Italian regarded it as good for media relations and nothing that would undermine his attempts to win football matches.
Not everyone has been like that, of course. Hodgson would complain and Gary Neville turned the issue into a personal crusade, suggesting any desire to reveal the team was ‘driven by a journalist’s ego’.
Neville was not entirely wrong. It is a competitive industry. But, again, it is only when the team sheet is published that the journalist actually knows if their information is correct. Sam Allardyce was happy to tell the football writers his team on the eve of a game when he became England manager. It did not, of course, provide him with immunity from the newspaper sting that cost him his job.
But Allardyce is far from unique in being so relaxed about his team. Luiz Felipe Scolari would allow the media to attend every Brazil train
ing session in Japan in 2002, so everyone knew he intended to select Kleberson ahead of Juninho for the quarter-final against England. They still won the game and went on to lift the World Cup with the same open-house approach.
Yesterday Neville clashed with journalists on social media, complaining that publishing photos like the one of Holland’s training notes ‘ undermines the relationship and trust with the team’.
He said this in response to a tweet from Dan Roan, the BBC sports editor. Roan said: ‘Core role of the media — in whatever field — is to report the news impartially. Public expect it in politics. Why any different in sport? Don’t know any journalists covering England here who don’t want to see the team do well. But also have a job to do. (It) was an open training session.’
Roan is right. Reporters are not cheerleaders. At least they shouldn’t be. And Southgate clearly failed to understand that when he told talkSPORT that ‘the media has to decide whether they want to help the team or not’.
The reporters who cover England are not an extension of Southgate’s squad. The job is to report on the national team, good and bad. Southgate needs to calm down and focus instead on the game rather than suggest that the media are guilty of some kind of act of betrayal.
Walker didn’t seem to see things that way yesterday. He said they ‘had a bit of a laugh’ with Holland, adding that having engaged in ‘a bit of banter’ they had moved on and were looking forward to the game. And at that precise moment, if Southgate was telling the truth when he spoke to the host broadcasters yesterday, he didn’t know the team either for a game England should nevertheless win.