Gerrards dive

A Wright Failure By The BBC...
Wednesday May 31 2006
By Pete Gill



"In the first 20 minutes he hit more bad passes than he did all season."

Fifteen words of censure that, measured by the standard football yardstick, wouldn't raise an eyebrow; but for those words to be uttered by Sven-Goran Eriksson, England’s famously uncritical manger, after last Thursday's B international, was a clear indication of Michael Carrick’s World Cup prospects. Reading between the lines, it was apparent that Carrick had failed to pass his audition.

Five nights later, the game had slipped off the radar.

As the BBC's assembled cast of experts, comprising Lee Dixon, Ian Wright and Alan Hansen, expressed repeated bafflement at Sven's "refusal to give Carrick a chance", as if the Tottenham player was a latter-day Pele mysteriously confined to the substitutes' bench, last week's B international took on a new guise: The Game That Never Happened.

Perhaps the BBC were mimicking Sky's policy of refusing to acknowledge a game's existence if they didn't hold exclusive rights; more likely, Dixon and co had simply forgotten about the game and/or failed to heed Sven's telling post-match criticism of Carrick.

The contribution of Dixon and Wright to the night's entertainment would be funny if it weren't so scary. Is it possible to watch six weeks of football with the mute button on permanently? If there was one positive to be taken from Wright’s wailings on Tuesday night it was that anything is possible; having spent the last two years desecrating the role of 'expert pundit', Wright achieved the seemingly impossible by further debasing the job.

Sven's wholly-justified decision to jettison Wright's adopted son from England's World Cup 23 appears to have eroded whatever modicum of reason Wright formerly possessed. Displaying more twitches than that fella with Tourette's Syndrome in the Big Brother house, the palpably bitter Wright's sole contribution was to disparage Eriksson at every opportunity.

Pundits do not necessarily have to be objective, but it would make sense if they occasionally made sense. Suggesting, with a remark that disgraced the BBC, that Hargreaves owed his place "because he knows something about Eriksson's family," must be the final straw. Eriksson's view of Wright's own family has sent him over the edge.

The lack of objectivity in the BBC's coverage was startling.

Steven Gerrard may have tripped over thin air to win England's first-half penalty but John Motson was more concerned with the delaying tactics of the Hungarian goalkeeper. These foreigners, eh? Well, quite. At half-time, Wright suggested that Gerrard was within his rights to dive to win a penalty as "that's what they'll do to us at the World Cup." Err, that's alright then.

Hargreaves was subjected to a hatchet job that surely owed much to the fact that he plies his trade overseas. The Bayern Munich midfielder may not have excelled but he was far from being as poor as the BBC pundits suggested. Given editorial control, the contribution of any player can be devalued by a few suggestive replays. Having refused to acknowledge last week's match, Carrick is clearly the BBC's golden boy despite making twice as many mistakes in the opening half-hour against Belarus as Hargreaves committed on Wednesday.

How ironic that having been promoted by the BBC in a nod to race relations, Wright is apparently unable to see beyond Hargreaves as a Canuck or some sort of German infiltrator.

Meanwhile, even though David Beckham had created both of England's clear-cut opportunities in the first half, Lee Dixon demanded that the Three Lions' most dangerous player should be substituted at the interval.

What more did Beckham need to do? The answer is, possibly, 'create both of England's goal within six minutes of half-time' but, due to his new-found reticence to discuss Beckham's contribution at full-time, there's still no way of knowing if that was enough to impress Dixon.

If it weren't for the blessed mute button, the next six weeks would suddenly take the form of a terrible ordeal.