OTF'er of The Tournament (Golden Keyboard)

[Tactical Genius]

OTF'er of The Tournament (Golden Keyboard)

You obviously have not been reading the newspapers, watched TV or listened to the radio in the last 24 hours.

Endless reruns of his abortive stepovers on Sky Sports News for a start.

[dalliance]

OTF'er of The Tournament (Golden Keyboard)

Teletext reported his retiral without comment. I am looking at the online edition of The Times now and it does not warrant a mention of any description.

If Sky Sports news are showing some of his infamously bad footwork, well let's be honest it's pretty easy to find that footage and a whole lot harder to find anything he did well. Did Jim White or whoever say or even remotely imply that Heskey was to blame for the World Cup exit? Did anyone refer to his skin colour as part of the story?

You don't really have any substance to say this stuff once again do you.

[Ek weet nie]

OTF'er of The Tournament (Golden Keyboard)

From 101gg:

Heskey Hangs up England Boots: After Emile Heskey announced his international retirement on Thursday the fifth estate were all too happy to comment on the fall of the striker.

For Daniel Taylor, “seven goals in 62 appearances for England is a paltry return as a striker who was once unplayable lost his self-belief… Heskey played under England’s last four full-time managers and it is difficult to think they all misjudged what he could bring to the team. At his best Heskey was virtually unplayable. Tony Cottee describes him as the best strike partner he ever had. Owen – the real Owen – could well agree. It is just that Heskey, somewhere along the line, forgot what he was really good at: terrorising defenders, burning them off, relying on his instincts.”

Robin Scott-Elliot opted to embarrass Heskey in a stats comparison. “The decision ends an England career that began 11 years ago on a spring evening in Budapest and has meandered through 62 caps, two World Cup finals, two European Championship finals, six managers and seven goals. It is that last figure that will be held against him. It is one fewer than Jose Luis Chilavert of Paraguay managed and he kept goal.”

Far less politically correct was Jim White, who adopted almost bullying tactics to beat up on Heskey after his international retirement announcement. “We must brace ourselves for a Heskey-free future. No more will his name appear in an England squad list. And, as a result, never again will the rest of the world scratch its head in astonishment at how it was that the glitch in the Football Association’s computer system – the one which continued mistakenly to insert his name in every squad list – had still not been fixed. Over the 11 seasons since his name first featured in an England 22 in 1999, Heskey picked up 62 caps, scoring seven times. Which would be a fine record were he, for instance, a right-back. But Heskey was an international centre-forward.”

Link halfway down this page. The journalists are from The Guardian, The Independent and The Telegraph respectively.

[Bored Of Education]

OTF'er of The Tournament (Golden Keyboard)

I don't see anything wrong with any of those.

Should Gerrard retire presently, I can't see him getting many rave reviews if any.

It's only the fact that Beckham appears never to retire that he isn't slated for being a one-paced one trick pony