Saturday, April 29, 2006

A Letter to the Press

Dear Tabloids (and others),

Congratulations. Congratulations for ruining the hard work of the FA, scuppering their interview process, and getting the leading candidate for the England manager to pull out of the running for the job.

When tournament time springs around, you are always keen to bill yourself as the "official" paper of the England team, or the "No 1 newspaper for all your World Cup news needs". It would be nice if for once you stopped just trying to talk a good game, and showed your support for the England team in your actions as well as your words.

How would you feel if your house was consistently surrounded by photographers and reporters hounding you for comments on your job? How would you feel if people started poking around in your private life to try and find some salacious gossip, totally unrelated to your job, to spread to as wide an audience as possible?

Does it matter whether Ashley Cole is gay? No, it's none of your business. Does it matter whether Wayne Rooney has run up massive gambling debts, or where Coleen does her shopping? Maybe to their bank managers, but it's no interest of the press whatsoever. And it certainly can't help England's World Cup chances, to test players mentally for no other reason than it helps you to sell a few newspapers.

And now you have shooed away the FA's chosen candidate for manager in your desperate thirst for the lowest common denominator.

For people who claim to support the England team in their quest for glory, you sure have a funny way of showing it.