HIS OPPONENTS were more charitable on Saturday night than the folks back home were ever likely to be, with Carlos Bocanegra expressing sympathy for England goalkeeper Richard Green, and Tim Howard, whose own performance in Rustenburg earned him the man of the match award, suggesting the new ball might have caught his opposite number out.
Green, though, was admirably frank in conceding the ball had not been a factor. “No, there’s no two ways about it,” he said. “It’s a shot from I don’t know how many yards. It’s one I should have stopped and the sort of one I will do time and time again in training. People make mistakes. The important thing is to move on.”
For the Fabio Capello and his recent predecessors, however, those words will have a painfully familiar ring to them in a decade of disasters.
It started in June 2000 when, with England on the verge of qualification for the quarter-finals of the European Championships, Nigel Martyn tamely parried a straightforward cross right on to the chest of Dorinel Munteanu, who calmly chested the ball down before firing home. The Romanians scored a late penalty to win 3-2 and England went home.
Two years later in Japan, David Seaman helped Brazil to a place in the World Cup semi-finals by completely misjudging a long range Ronaldinho free kick. It was a fine strike but it was from a long, long way out and the Englishman had more than enough time to make the necessary adjustment to his position before attempting the save. Unfortunately, he got it all wrong.
During the early days of the campaign to qualify for the World Cup in Germany, David James managed to undermine his side’s chances of progressing with a hopeless attempt to smother a medium range shot by Andreas Ivanschitz. The hosts had trailed Sven Goran Eriksson’s side 2-0 but the error helped them achieve a 2-2 draw.
A couple of years on and the goalkeeper’s jersey had been entrusted to Paul Robinson, but he produced perhaps the most spectacular cock up of the lot when he attempted to stop a simple Gary Neville back pass with his boot. He failed to control the ball, which ran on into the net and Croatia ended up putting themselves on the road to Switzerland and Austria with a 2-0 win.
Shades of Saturday night about this one in November 2007, with Scott Carson failing to get his body behind a Niko Kranjcar shot during the return match in Croatia in much the same was as Green did against the Americans. The Croatians ended up stunning their hosts with a 3-2 win.
– Emmet Malone
