Top journo destroys Rice critics with GCSE jibe
Writing in the Daily Mail Samuel declares with contemptuous ease: “Rice performed somersaults to avoid offending the nation of his grandparents but this drama wasn’t his fault.
If Ireland insist on making teenagers choose nationalities before they have picked their GCSE subjects, what do they expect?”
Ouch!
Samuel is now widely recognised as a doyen among sports writers and in showing that he has a much wider perspective on life than football, has delivered an uppercut to the jaws of those in charge of the game in the country.
It was always a given that Declan was going to receive plenty of stick – as prophesied by Gonzo in his latest vlog – but Samuel has truly hit where it hurts …and he’s right.
There’s far more to any youngster’s life – or should be – than football, however gifted he may be. Too many fail to concentrate on the academic qualifications that matter ahead of starting out in the game.
The result is that they either become pundits criticising the behaviour of players thirty or 40 years their juniors or they run pubs.
Samuel adds:”Rice will walk into the England squad, and quite possibly his team. He is the player Southgate has been missing, the central defensive midfielder with world-class potential.
Given the evidence of his first Premier League season, he could be better there than Jordan Henderson or Eric Dier.
He breaks up play, reads the game intelligently, passes well; 86 per cent accuracy for West Ham this season, if not with huge ambition as yet. He has excelled this season against the elite teams. He could be the missing link.
Rice is just the latest of their young English-born recruits to desert after Jack Grealish and Michael Keane. The department set up to tempt teenagers with Irish heritage are talent catchers, not talent keepers.
Footballers’ grannies were once used to give opportunity to those who were stuck in a dead end. It was perfectly obvious that Maidstone-born Andy Townsend wasn’t going to be picked by England when he elected to become Irish at 25. It was the only way he could play international football. That wasn’t necessarily true of Rice.
Townsend suffered an absence of choice until Ireland came along, Rice was simply offered more choices. It is the difference between opportunity and opportunism.