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John Giles calls bullsh*t on E...

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John Giles calls bullsh*t on England penalties hype

98FM
98FM

05:59 5 Jul 2018


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On Tuesday night, England ended a barren run in World Cup penalty shootouts by finally winning one.

Four successful kicks by Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford, Kieran Trippier and Eric Dier made up for a Jordan Henderson miss to see off Colombia, with the credit going to Gareth Southgate and his team for the way they prepared for the tension.

John Giles calls bullsh*t on England penalties hype

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

Leeds and Ireland John Giles joined us as always on a Thursday and has been somewhat bemused by the reaction to England's penalty shootout success.

"They're penalty kicks. Penalty kicks in professional football is a penalty kick," he said.

"Of course you can prepare. But why didn't Henderson score? Didn't he do the same preparation as the others. The very same. 

"I'm not saying you shouldn't prepare. Of course you should prepare. These are good professional footballers!"

John also feels that regardless of preparation, penalty shootouts "still come to the occasion" that can only be matched by being in the situation itself.

He also feels an element of hindsight has been applied to England's penalty shootout success.

"Again, I'm not taking anything away from England. Good luck to them. I'll say one thing: they've been the luckiest team ever on the draw. There's no doubt about that," he said, adding that the Three Lions were grouped with two of the worst teams in the World Cup in the shape of Tunisia and Panama.

"But what happens in football, when a team is winning - and they won the other night on penalties - everything is 'OK, what did they do?'

"If they missed the penalties the other night, they'd be saying all that stuff that Southgate did [to prepare for penalties] was a waste of time."


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