Written by Daniel Blazer for Footballfancast.com: Football is rife with untruths (shock horror): the kiss of a badge, the denial of an imminent transfer or the backing of a manger already half way out the exit door. However, some untruths have come from misguidance and no matter how absurd the myth, us football fans have stuck by them religiously; here they are, the myths that just don’t add up.
“A team are at their most vulnerable after they’ve scored”
Andy Gray on Fifa 2010 used this line more than Ronaldo ends up on the floor; admittedly it does happen, and did regularly to me on Fifa 10 (especially from my friend Tim, who had an uncanny knack of pegging me back straight away), but there are ample amounts of occasions where this hasn’t been the case.
“It only takes a second to score a goal”
Has anyone actually scored when the clock reads “00:01”? I know I’m just being pernickety, but still. Usually it is a second that the ball leaves the players boot to hitting the net but surely you have to consider the build up play beforehand?
“There are no easy games in international football”
I’m sure striker Archie Thompson would have begged to differ, after bagging thirteen goals when Australia beat Samoa 32-0.
“These things even themselves out over the course of the season”
They quite clearly don’t, furthermore it contradicts the other old age myth that ‘luck goes against you when you are at the bottom’.
Dirk Kuyt is a good forward because he runs
Carlos Tevez is always praised for his work ethic and the Argentinian has done this as well as scoring frequently for Manchester City this season; Dirk Kuyt however, who is naturally a striker despite being used as winger, appears to escape criticism for his ratio of scoring only 65 goals in 239 appearances because “he is such a worker”.
Germans are very ordered and rigid
The way the likes of Mesut Ozil and Thomas Muller danced around opposition players in South Africa well and truly destroyed the myth that Germany can’t produce skillful, but rather functional players (Dietmar Hamann and Michael Ballack come to mind).
British players can’t play abroad
The Premier League is one of the strongest leagues in the world but, despite this, not too many Brits have succeeded abroad; Jimmy Greaves was one of the first to experience foreign soil when he joined AC Milan, yet after a few months he was back on home soil (despite scoring a respectable 9 goals in 12 games). The likes of Ian Rush and Jonathan Woodgate have continued this trend, but David Beckham’s time at AC Milan, Owen Hargreaves at Bayern Munich and Matt Derbyshire’s at Olympiakos are beginning to break the mould.
Beckham can pull off any haircut
We all saw the Beckham mohawk or mohican, either way, whatever it was, it was nothing short of a fashion faux pas and was far from the pretty boy curtain hairstyled boy England fell in love with all those years ago.
Ryan Giggs should have played for England
We all would have loved the Welsh wizard to be donning the shirt with the Three Lions crest on, but it’s not his forceful grandmother who prevented the Manchester United star playing for England, it was Giggs’ own Welsh pride, “People saying I should have played for England makes me furious, I am 100% Welsh”.
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