Responsibilty

Only one story to concentrate on today and that is the naming of Rio Ferdinand as England captain.

I shall first make a list of all the stories on it:

The Daily Star
The Guardian
The Guardian again
The Times
The Times again
The Telegraph
The Daily Mail
The Daily Mail again

In only one of these stories is this point made:

Given Capello's eagerness to find leaders in a team he knows are suffering a crisis of confidence, sharing the armband around makes sense, although there are limits. Mild-mannered Wayne Rooney, anyone? Ashley Cole? Glen Johnson, who was once fined £80 for switching the price on a toilet seat in B&Q so he could get it on the cheap? Ferdinand is positively statesman-like in comparison.

That is the point that while Rio has commited the odd misdemeanor in the past, who hasn't? John Terry? So all these stories discuss whether it is right for Rio to captain England given his past, some, admittedly, make passing mention to John Terry's off field behaviour, most mention his on field "antics", and yet because all the stories focus almost exclusively with Rio's behaviour one is left with the impression that he is somehow a devil among the angels. So I'm not going to spend time going through them (the quote above comes from "The Times again". Quick nod to the Daily Star report which, I'm assuming is a joke, includes this sentence:

Capello decided to ignore the Manchester United player’s ban five years ago for a missed drugs test and hand him the armband for tonight’s game against France.

How could he possibly ignore something that happened "5 years ago"? How remiss.

If you read the stories you will find quotes from Rio and mentions of his great community work.

Two other articles;

Interview with Patrice Evra in The Mail:

He has interesting views on why English teams have done so well in that competition while the national team has struggled.

"At United, when we lose a match, it's a crisis," he said.

"In two years I have never had the experience of being on the losing side twice in succession, touch wood.

Don Howe changes his tune from the other day and argues in this article that England should play like us:

I believe the England manager will have his team attacking France in a style that is very reminiscent of the way Sir Alex Ferguson has his Manchester United sides going at the opposition. It's a style that places an emphasis on movement and mobility of the front-line players, whose positions become interchangeable. The attackers keep popping up left, right and centre in a mercurial way, like that which has propelled United to the top of the Premier League.

Drab and unpretty one day, mobile and mercurial the next. Make up your mind Don.