The Joe Hart-Bonnie Tyler joke is reaching more and more ears today. Those who aren't aware of this masterpiece of twitter banter, see Stephen Dean Pashley's tweet below.
Bonnie Tyler has a goalkeeping bloopers dvd coming out. "Totally clips of Joe Hart".
— Stephen Dean Pashley (@pashley13) June 28, 2016
Something strange seems to befall those lads unfortunate enough to be handed the England No. 1 jersey.
When studying the history of the England goalkeeper position over the last forty years, you begin to believe that the England team might be cursed.
Did the England team fail to stop for a funeral when parading the Jules Rimet around London in 1966?
Listen to our discussion of England on the Euros Racket below:
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The hall of horrors stretches back to 1970 when an actually good England team fell to the West Germans in the World Cup quarter-final in Mexico.
Gordon Banks was the most feted stopper on the globe, wowing the world with that save fro m Pele in the group game against Brazil.
Sadly, Banksy was to spend the night before the German game puking into a toilet. English sporting folklore long ago decided that a dodgy Mexican waiter was to blame. All that the tale is lacking is any proof whatsoever.
Peter 'the Cat' Bonetti replaced him. Bonetti played a starring role in Chelsea's FA Cup win in 1970 and would win the Cup Winners Cup the following year. However, with favourites England cruising 2-0, he allowed a shot from Franz Beckenbauer wriggle under his arm. England disintegrated and lost 3-2.
By the standards of his successors, Bonetti's mistake wasn't egregious but he copped the blame for the loss.
England failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup - the first time they missed a World Cup for which they attempted to qualify.
The scapegoat this time was young Peter Shilton, who would go on to become one of England's greatest goalkeepers. Shilts let a harmless shot squirm under his arms and England were denied the victory they needed.
After the late 70s, in which Ron Greenwood couldn't decide whether he preferred Steve Clemence or Peter Shilton, the England goalkeeping role entered a period of stability in the 80s as Shilts nailed down the No. 1 spot and excelled for a number of years, playing every match at Italia 90 at the age of 40.
Once Shilton conceded that the jig was up, he was succeeded by... well Taylor could never decide whether he liked David Seaman or Chris Woods more.
Woods, the Rangers and latterly Sheffield Wednesday keeper, won the battle initially, operating between the sticks during England's miserable summer in Sweden in Euro 92. Woods' final game for England was the 2-0 loss against the USA in the summer of 1993, the absolute low point of Graham Taylor's reign which never hit the heights and plumbed some serious depths. Woods didn't cover himself in glory on Alexei Lalas's goal which put the giddy hosts 2-0 up.
Following the scarring failure to reach the World Cup in 1994, England didn't play a competitive football match for two calendar years. Between the November '93 match against San Marino, now solely remembered for the Stuart Pearce 'back-pass' which allowed the minnows to take the lead (that England eventually won 7-1 has been relegated to an after-thought) and the first game of Euro 96 against Switzerland, England had to make to do with Green Flag friendlies and the occasional friendly which ended early due to violence. It didn't matter who was in goal.
David Seaman occupied the No. 1 jersey from 1996 until 2002, performing his duties with quiet competence until his last year in the job when his flair for flailing wildly at deep crosses began to cost England. Not only did he lose the flight of the ball on the infamous Ronaldinho goal, he cocked up against the Macedonians in a qualifier, allowing a corner to sail over his pony-tailed noggin. Rather unfairly, these are the primary incidents anyone remembers from his career.
With Seaman showing signs of age, the most dramatic of which was his decision to retire in 2004, Sven Goran Eriksson was forced to do what England managers had been consistently trying to avoid for years and give David James the No. 1 jersey.
He was made regret this decision quickly after a World Cup qualifier in Vienna, when James made a balls of stooping low to collect a shot from Andreas Ivancic. In classic England howler style, he allowed the ball to inexplicably slip under his body.
Sven repented and James was out in the cold for another few years, at least until his late-career burst of reliability in the late noughties/early tens.
The latest nervy, uninspiring shirt-filler to contribute to the blooper reel was Paul Robinson who at least has the luxury of being able to blame the groundsman for his presence.
The video is titled 'Neville Own Goal', a rather unfair association given that Gary Neville can hardly have thought he was putting his keeper in an invidious position when passing the ball back to him.
England were beaten 2-0 in Croatia, a result which would lay the foundation for their failure to reach Euro 2008.
When the camera switched back to a sombre-looking Steve McClaren in the dugout, he was busily scribbling notes on his clipboard.
In the Sunday Independent, Dion Fanning pondered what he might have been writing, speculating that it must have been 'a stern letter to the groundsman'. Or else the word 'FUCK' in capital letters.
By the time of the even more disastrous return match against Croatia in Wembley, novice and then flavour of the month Scott Carson was thrown into the goal. McClaren, it was frequently noted, was vulnerable to the whims and fancies of the tabloid press.
Young Carson was doing well in his loan spell at Villa. He did less well on his England debut, committing the kind of ridiculous howler that could only be the result of crippling nervousness.
He subsequently decided that Olic was offside and made barely a cursory effort to prevent the Croatian slipping home the second.
Poor old Steve McClaren's determination to avoid getting wet earned him the nickname 'the wally with the brolly'. He was binned after the hideous failure to reach Euro 2008.
England were as bullish as ever prior to the 2010 World Cup. Their 'golden generation' were a long time on the go by that stage. And now they had a manager whose credentials were not in doubt.
However, it transpired that not even Fabio Capello's hitherto impeccable managerial reputation could survive a stint with the England football team.
The days of Banks and Shilton (and even Seaman) were a distant memory. The top clubs all had continentals between the sticks, and England had a cast of relative nonentities to choose from for the No. 1 shirt ahead of the summer extravaganza in South Africa.
Capello decided that the least worst option was West Ham's Rob Green. He was the latest blithering wreck to be entrusted with minding the goal in 2010.
England started like a freight train against the US with Gerard poking home an early goal, a strike which ITV missed, due to some cock-up whereby an ad interrupted the action at the crucial moment.
A graver cock-up occurred on the pitch with Green committing what possibly counts as the worst error of the lot here.
We like to imagine that Clint Dempsey was cursing the air at the tameness of his shot and was only alerted to the fact that it went in by the oohs and aahs of the crowd and the 'fucken 'ells' of the England defence.
And yesterday was the turn of the most prolific chest-beater of our age, Joe Hart, who already has an impressive back-catalogue of howlers at club level, to add to this extensive blooper reel. He contributed heartily to the most humiliating England loss of them all.
Ladbrokes Bet of the Day
On the Racket, our Ladbrokes Bet of the Day centred around the quarter-finals. After a couple of setbacks, we're offering a safe-ish treble. We've excluded the too close to call Italy-Germany game.
We're going for Belgium, Poland and France to win, a treble which comes in at around 8.5/1.
