Lazy Journalism (Arsenal v Barcelona related)

This is the offending paragraph:

Some players and coaches believe that the man who wins the penalty should not take the consequent kick. Not Fábregas. Not on this night. Not against this opposition. Although clearly hurt in the challenge, he prepared himself carefully, waited for the referee to give the signal, and struck a perfect effort low and hard into the left-hand corner of the net. Víctor Valdés guessed wrong, but would have been helpless in any case.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/apr/01/cesc-fabregas-arsenal-barcelona

Now I have several issues with this.

Fabregas always takes Arsenal’s penalties and has done before after winning it himself (most recently against West Ham, a mere eleven days ago). The whole ‘not on this night, not against this oppostion’ sounds like the end of Titanic. But most importantly, the last bit. The penalty definitely wasn’t perfect. It didn’t go into the corner. But far more pressingly, had Victor Valdes gone the right way, he would have saved it with ease.

Why lie? The penalty was a foot off the ground and slightly left of middle. It wasn’t a good penalty, Fabregas just got lucky as Valdes went the wrong way. Yes he did well to score under pressure and whilst injured, and that is more than enough to gloss the drama of the incident. You don’t need to make obvious factual inaccuracies in search of manufactured catharsis.

Of course Richard Williams is an infinitely better writer than me; but I don’t get paid by a major news corporation or have hundreds of thousands of people reading my posts (I doubt, anyway) – but were that the case, I would at least make sure I described correctly where a penalty went.

Lazy.