Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Penalties are reserved for all the hungry kids
This country needs politicians who tell us what they really think. So we should celebrate Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke. She complained about Marcus Rashford, saying he should have “spent more time perfecting his game and less time playing politics” after he missed his penalty in the Euro final.
Exactly. Her party has worked so hard over ten years to create as much child poverty as possible, and then this complete outsider undermines all their efforts by getting food to hungry kids – the annoying pest.
You can see why she’s irritated. It’s like that England fan who was filmed with a firework up his backside, carefully getting everything in place and setting it alight, only for some spoilsport with a hose to spray water over his arse and ruin it.
Because sport teaches us an important message – which is that we must stop trying to feed hungry children.
This is the Christian attitude we expect from our leaders. It began with the parable told by Jesus of the Good Samaritan. In this story a traveller from Samaria finds a Jewish man wounded by the roadside, so he cleans him and pays an innkeeper to look after him.
But the Samaritan then went on to miss a penalty against Galilee in the shoot-out after the final of the Holy Land Football Tournament. If he’d spent more time practising he might not have let everyone down, the idiot.
Having shown such expertise on the game – though she did later apologise – Natalie should become a pundit. Then
she can offer insights such as: “Everton have been poor up front this season, because half of them visit sick children in hospitals instead of practising shooting. They’re a disgrace.”
Following black England players being sent abuse, the Prime Minister wants to ban from football “forever” people who made racist comments online.
We should all get behind him in this. For example one comment you can easily find online says that women wearing burkas “look like letterboxes”.
Hopefully Boris Johnson can track this thug down and make sure he never wears an England shirt.
Another online comment describes black Africans as “Piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. So we must hope the Prime Minister finds this person, who goes by the name of “Boris Johnson”, and alerts the FA immediately, in case he ever tries to sneak into Wembley to watch a match.
The Government also condemned the abuse of England players, but a few weeks ago Priti Patel said she didn’t mind if people booed them for supporting Black Lives Matter.
I suppose the Home Secretary’s concern is that booing should be done in person, rather than online, as it’s good to keep these things live, just like at music festivals.
But now the football’s over, the Government can get back to its priorities, such as denying food and books to children until forced to by a footballer.
Some people might suggest this sort of activity should be a priority for a government.
But it could be that they don’t have time – as they now spend all day practising penalties.