ROBBIE SAVAGE COLUMN: None of the trolls on social media has ever captained Manchester United or been transferred for £80million as the most-expensive defender on the planet
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Football Digest: Maguire gets Southgate’s support amid Man Utd woes
Harry Maguire can stand tall, with his head held high, and reflect on his achievements as a professional footballer.
None of the fans taunting him at Hampden Park the other night has ever played in a European Championship final or a World Cup semi-final. None of the trolls on social media has ever captained Manchester United, one of the world’s biggest football clubs, or been transferred for £80million as the most-expensive defender on the planet.
And none of the hanging judges who lampoon and harpoon him with witless criticism has ever survived the merciless mickey-taking and one-liners in a dressing room full of egos. Stick your chest out, Harry – because all that abuse masks a beautiful truth.
All those critics, every single one of them, would love to be in your boots. They only mock you, mimic you and make fun of you because, in your career, you have achieved more than any of them could ever imagine being possible.
None of them knows the dedication or the sacrifices you have made to play more than 500 games at club level, plus 59 England caps. And inevitably, when you look back on your contribution to the game, you can be proud that you reached the top one per cent after playing at every level from League One to the World Cup.
Like every decent person, I have been sickened by the way criticism of Maguire as a footballer has spiralled out of control into unacceptable scapegoating and hounding of a human being. I know what it’s like to be singled out for relentless abuse on a football pitch.
Occasionally it’s funny – I had to laugh when I was once called the “missing Bee Gee” because of my long hair and white teeth. But most of it is vile and it turns the pitch into the loneliest, most horrible place on earth.
Harry Maguire scored an unfortunate own goal in England’s win over Scotland
I was hammered by opposition fans more times than I care to remember and, for a while, I even copped it from my own club’s fans at Derby when we were relegated from the Premier League with a record low number of points. Thankfully I won them round because I cared, I showed commitment and they recognised that I was fighting for the cause.
But when the abuse was at its worst, no amount of money can soften the blow to your pride. Maguire has had a fantastic career, but £190,000-a-week is not going to make him, or his family, feel any better about his appalling treatment.
I feel for his mum, Zoe, who branded the torrent of negativity aimed at her son “disgraceful and totally unacceptable.” My mum never watched me for the last five years of my playing career. She travelled to every game with my dad, but she would spend 90 minutes walking round the stadium outside because she could not bear to listen to all the abuse being aimed at her son.
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Maguire was subjected to a social media pile-on after his own goal against Scotland in midweek, but what was he supposed to do – let Andy Robertson’s cross zip across the six-yard box without trying to intercept it? Why wasn’t the cross cut out at source? Why did Maguire get all the abuse while some of his team-mates, who were equally culpable, get off scot-free?
In the 1-1 with Ukraine, I didn’t notice any England players get pelters when Oleksandr Zinchenko opened the scoring – but somebody failed to track his run into the six-yard box. Maguire stuck out a leg because it was instinct, in the same way that you would flinch if someone swung a punch at you.
It is only to his credit that he faced the media after England’s 3-1 win at Hampden and insisted he can “deal with” the flak, even suggesting it took some of the pressure off his team-mates. But the pitch is still a hard place to be when there’s 50,000 people hammering you, and you need a thick skin to survive as long as Maguire has stayed in the team.
Maguire trained with Manchester United this week (
Image:
Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
Unfortunately, Three Lions coach Gareth Southgate has backed himself into a corner by showing such loyalty to Maguire. His insistence, a few years ago, that he would select players on form not reputation has not stood the test of time.
Maguire is only fourth-choice centre-back at United, and his game time has been severely limited over the last 12 months since he was dropped after that 4-0 hiding at Brentford. I admire him for turning down a move to West Ham and resolving to fight for his place at Old Trafford.
But Southgate will have to keep picking Maguire – because if he left him out of the squad now, he could be accused of bottling it and caving in to public opinion on social media.
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