Actually, this won’t be quite the last word on Robert Green’s fumble. Indeed, Jeremy Robson argues, it will haunt the poor man forever – though he feels the blame actually lies elsewhere. Step forward, Mr Capello. …
Quite why English players and managers wait until they reach a World Cup finals to press the self destruct button, who knows?
Robert Green has committed himself to cameo clips for the next several decades.
The FA, in traditionally clueless fashion, mucked up the announcement of Fabio Capello’s final squad, allowing names of players supposedly omitted or included to be leaked all over the shop while, for whatever reason, dithering over an official statement. At 3pm BST, they finally got round to saying there’d be an announcement in an hour. Why couldn’t they have made this clear earlier, or explained why they couldn’t make it clear? Are they really as hard of thinking as they seem determined to appear? And so it was in the end confirmed, and to no great surprise among Sunderland fans, that Capello had found no room for Darren Bent in the 23-strong squad heading for South Africa. Darren – the great image is from Addick-TedKevin‘s Flickr pages – has learnt a sharp lesson from the Book of Certainties: to be both a Sunderland player, and chosen for England, is one of football’s tallest orders …
When Kevin Keegan picked Kevin Phillips, then the best striker in the Premier League and not even playing in a top six team, to go to Holland and Belgium for Euro 2000, some of us looked forward to seeing how our star would fare at international level.
He was never given the chance.
Did anyone in the England camp actually want Darren Bent to go to South Africa? Do Rooney and Lampard have as much say as Fabio? Did Darren miss a sitter or just a half chance in a token appearance in which it was pre-ordained that he’d barely see the ball?
I watched the first half of the England game today. I was hoping to see a sparkling performance from Darren which would ensure that he would be joining Lampard, Gerard, Cole and Terry on that flight to South Africa.
Bent for England. The cry was heard again after his latest goalscoring feats. But some observers feel Fabio Capello will not be swayed by his remarkable record in a team that – at least before our mini-run – had hardly kept him supplied with a consistent stream of quality service …
The Daily Star is not a newspaper to which Salut! Sunderland turns as a matter of everyday routine.
It may be a fountain of wisdom and truth, but we prefer other sources of information. But an item about Darren Bent’s suitability – or supposed unsuitability – for a place in England’s World Cup squad leapt from the laptop page.