England manager Gareth Southgate has responded to his team sheet leaking to the press and going viral all around the world yesterday. The team note, which conveys a majority of a potential starting XI for Sunday’s World Cup group stage clash against Panama, implies that Marcus Rashford will be in the first team alongside Harry Kane up top.
The formation on the note also infers that Rashford’s inclusion thus drops Raheem Sterling to the bench, and that Dele Alli will be missing due to injury and replaced by Ruben Loftus-Cheek. Southgate says we shouldn’t read too much into this document and that it doesn’t confirm any individual players statuses for Sunday.
Spotted in Steve Holland’s hand at England Training this morning. @standardnews pic.twitter.com/VESqeFT5pu
— jeremy selwyn (@jeremyselwyn1) June 21, 2018
He tried to play down the importance of it, by referring to the document as “just a squad list,” but he did confirm that Alli will almost certainly miss this match, giving the Tottenham man just a “slim chance” of featuring. However, the most memorable and note-worthy part of the Southgate media session related to an entirely different topic- journalism ethics.
“Obviously any time, if we were to give the opposition the opportunity of having our team it’s a disadvantage to us,” Southgate added. “So of course our media has to decide if they want to help the team or not.”
With that remark Southgate is clearly telling the media who cover the team to take a side, with or against them. That’s actually not the job of the press at all.
A free press exists to be NOT biased in any way, so for Southgate to command the opposite from the journalists around his team is quite bizarre to say the least.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, is currently a regular contributor to SB Nation, WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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