Football's Instant Experts

Oh dear, that time has come around again. Once every four years, journalists who would rather go to the ballet in tights than watch a football (soccer) game are asked by their editors to cover Football World Cup stories. What their editors ignore is that it takes decades of accumulated knowledge to write knowledgeably about a sport, and the mistakes are already rampant. We are given references to umpires rather than referees, players are sent to the 'sin bin', which does not exist in football, and goals are 'kicked', when they should be 'scored'.

But Paul Kent's article in today's Sunday Telegraph is an early candidate for journalistic stuff-up of the tournament. We are told about a movie called 'The Third Goal', when 'a German goal was disallowed despite no certain evidence that it had not crossed the England goal line.' No wonder Paul needed a convoluted double-negative. The third goal in the 1966 World Cup final was disputed because of the doubt whether a shot from England's Geoff Hurst crossed the line. A German disallowed goal? Could be a very short movie.