Simon Jordan has refused to apologise for calling Tottenham Hotspur forward Harry Kane a bottler.
Jordan was publicly critical of the England captain after his penalty miss cost the Three Lions elimination from the World Cup last week, with the TalkSPORT pundit claiming the Tottenham striker bottled it.
Harry Kane had already scored one past Lloris in the game, but the nerves got the better of him against the keeper who knows him so very well. He blasted the second penalty in the stands, a miss that knocked England out of the World Cup.
Jordan attempted to defend his remarks live on TalkSPORT, saying (0:40):
“I did move back into the camp of saying if you succumb to the pressure, which I think Harry Kane did because the goalkeeper didn’t save the ball, Harry Kane put the ball over the bar, then there is an element of succumbing to the pressure that moves to the territory of saying you bottled it a little bit.
“Now, people don’t like that terminology in the same that if you call a footballer a cheat people get most offended by it because it’s terminology you can’t use but I do think if succumbing to the pressure is what you’ve done then there’s an element that you lost your bottle at that particular moment.
“It doesn’t make you a bottler per se, it means in that moment you were beaten by the circumstances because the goalkeeper didn’t save it Harry Kane put the ball 55 feet over the bar.”
He was interrupted by Martin Keown who asked him if he trying to apologise for his remarks, to which Jordan very quickly responded bluntly with (1:20) : “No, I’m not apologising.”
The comments were unnecessarily harsh, given that Kane had performed admirably for England throughout the tournament, scoring two goals and assisting three others to become England’s joint top scorer in history.
