“Apology follows Pantsil gesture”

says an article the BBC Sports section, referring to John Pantsil, a member of the Ghanaian team that unexpectedly defeated the Czech Republic in the World Cup match on Saturday. It is an odd choice of headline. Those who get no further than the headline might be forgiven for thinking that the unspecified gesture was obscene.

Actually it was much more shocking than that. He waved an Israeli flag. Mr Pantsil plays for an Israeli team and had apparently promised his Israeli fans that he would do this if Ghana scored.

Commenter Archduke says:

note the BIGGER factoid buried in the story:

FIFA “had said they had no problem with the gesture.”

also note the quote from the israeli sports minister at the end.

you could argue that the headline should read “Ghana gains Israeli support” or “Israelis delighted by Ghanan gesture”

I think that the BBC headline did originally say something very like what archduke suggests. At time of writing (4.50pm BST), this Google News search shows a link to a BBC Sport story, and the link text says, “Ghana win friends in Israel.” But if you click the link you get to the story with the “Apology” headline.

UPDATE: Blogger wasn’t working so I was unable to publish this post until several hours after I wrote it. Google News has changed but you can still see the link to the BBC story saying “Ghana win friends in Israel” if you press “All 36 related.” Am I right in thinking that was the original headline? If I am, why was it changed to one that seems designed to depress interest?