Roy
Hodgson says he and his players are angry that England's World Cup
qualification has been overshadowed by the furore surrounding comments he made
during Tuesday's game against Poland.
Hodgson
was criticised for referring to a joke about a monkey and an astronaut at
half-time in the 2-0 win, which secured England's 2014 World Cup place.
I
think I should make it official this is the biggest over-reaction and attempt
to make something out of nothing with a story involving the England football
team, granted there are many worthy candidates but I nominate this one for the top
honour.
I’ve
criticised Hodgson on a few of his selections and the way he’s set the team up, but to try and engineer it so that Hodgson made a racist comment and turn it into a moral dilemma is absurd.
I
admit I was a little surprised to hear that Hodgson tells jokes during
half-time team talks, and while the joke he told about an astronaut and a
monkey on a NASA mission is long winded and unfunny, that’s it that’s where it
ends he told a bad joke, that’s it there is no more to be made out of it.
While
I want to see racism kicked out of football as much as the next person, but I
think there’s a danger of becoming overly sensitive to it and that any comment
can be taken and twisted to make the argument that whoever made that comment is
a racist.
One
important thing to remember from all this is that none, I repeat, none of the black
players in the dressing room took any offence, and that’s where it should have
ended.
However, it is
quite concerning that Hodgson and the FA are trying to promote this idea that
the England squad is close knit and really together, much more so than in
previous years, and yet this story was leaked and blown out of all proportion,
so the England camp is obviously not as close as we’ve been led to believe.
If
anything that’s the real story here, the fact that there is someone in the
England set-up who leaked this and tried to discredit the manager when all he’d
done was tell a bad joke.
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