Wednesday, 19 September 2012

Joe Hart's post Real Madrid interview great for game

It's only a month or so since the Olympics have ended and everyone had enjoyed the frank, emotional and refreshingly open interviews from the athletes.

Gone were the emotionally open as a piece of wood interviews from the top, PRed up to their eye balls, players who speak in cliches and semantically null dross, quite often.

Fans have been ready for a new impetus in interviews; a changing of the ethos from players, whose comments are awaited, analysed and analysed again.

Then Manchester City throw away a lead against Real Madrid, who deserved to win handsomely, incidentally.

Real had 28 shots on goal with 16 on target to City's respective 8 and 5.

It would have been a smash and grab, but, not to belittle the win it would have been: it would have been a fantastic result for Manchester City and would have vindicated their style on the night.

Immediately after the match Hart is pulled in for a post-match interview. Joe's a refreshing character. He's to the point, honest and open. And what he actually said in the interview was quite expected stuff. He was disappointed.

Whether a side has been outclassed or not, leading with five minutes remaining should at least garner a point and, if you're Manchester City, leading with five minutes to go should mean a victory.

But, no. A Kompany, Hart misdemeanour meant Ronaldo settled the tie during injury time, bringing all three points back to the Bernebeau.

Kompany ducked out the way of the shot. And, with personal experience in those sort of split-second head retractions, I know it can leave you no time to react at all.

The City skipper was too deep firstly, and then ducked his head as Ronaldo's so-so shot went towards the middle of the goal. But, retracting that head, leaving the keeper unsighted gives him the seven yards from it whistling past Kompany to react.

Not enough.

Then when asked his opinion in the interview he said what he thought - it wasn't good enough. If City want to win competitions such as the Champions League, they have to close out games.

They didn't, he said so and he didn't say much more. He said he couldn't take a positive and there was little positivity to take from the game in the end.

If they had smash-and-grabbed a point, or maybe the three then the defensive resilience and Hart's own performance would have earned praise. But losing in that fashion means there is little positivity and City have now probably surrendered top-spot to Real in the group already.

Maybe it's the media just searching for a story out of nothing, but I'm sure Roberto Mancini's remark of 'Joe should leave the criticising to me' was again a first-time response from the Italian and he bears no real grudge.

After all, Hart only said what we've all said after losing to the Dog and Duck in the last minute on a sunday. Although our gripes could likely be from a bobble on the pitch or a dodgy linesman.

Fair play, Joe Hart. More of that please.


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