Did break-up with Toronto model haunt besieged English goalie?British media is reporting that Toronto model Elizabeth Minett is behind keeper Robert Green's failure to save an easy shot, which led to England tying the U.S. 1-1 in its World Cup opener. The tabloid says the keeper is still plagued by the pair's split two weeks ago. To the British, she’s Elizabeth Minett, the 5-foot-10 lingerie model whose memory haunted the goalie whose slippery fingers devastated the England team in the match against the U.S.
To the folks in Guelph and Muskoka, she’s the gorgeous, brainy, globetrotting Lizzie, daughter of dentist Dr. Charles Minett and granddaughter of Manhattan Project scientist Ernest Everet Minett.
“She’s not just gorgeous, she’s dramatic gorgeous,” says a woman who has known her since she was born 23 years ago into a prominent Ontario family.
Minett, who graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2008 with a degree in economics, is “very bright” as well as beautiful, she told the Star, although asking that her name not be used.
Two British tabloid newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, blamed Minett on Monday for goalie Robert Green’s stunning miss on a routine shot that allowed the U.S. to tie in its World Cup match against England on Saturday.
She and Green, 30, met two years ago in Toronto when his West Ham team was touring Canada, the Daily Mail said. They’d lived together in a luxe flat overlooking the Thames on the Isle of Dogs in London until about a month ago, when the relationship ended.
Green’s agent Andy Evans was quoted by the Daily Mirror Sunday night as insisting the split has not affected the goalie’s focus in South Africa.
He said: “Their relationship was over many months ago. This really is not an issue and Rob has gone into the World Cup prepared mentally and as focused as possible.”
Minett herself issued a terse “no comment” Monday through two of the modelling agencies she works for: Next Models of Toronto and Elite Models, which has offices in Toronto and Miami. Minett is on the roster for the Miami TV division of Elite.
But three months ago, she was happily telling a British tab that she was going to South Africa to cheer Green on and would resort to “French or French-Canadian” to thwart the spies who tried to eavesdrop on the couple.
“They will not be able to understand a thing,” she was quoted as saying by the tabloid Daily Star. “Even the French media will not be able to understand.
“I will put the Canadian accent on so strong. That's my plan anyway. I started learning French when I was 3 and am pretty much fluent. I even have a cousin living in Paris who is married to a Frenchman.”
Her big family has deep roots in Ontario. Grandfather Ernest Everet Minett graduated from the University of Toronto and did graduate studies at MIT before working on the Manhattan Project and developing Remington Rand’s UNIVAC computer systems.
Aunt Barb and Uncle Doug Minett have operated the The Bookshelf, an independent book store, in Guelph for 37 years.
And the whole extended family, a relative told the Star, still congregates on the island in Georgian Bay that E.E. and his wife Alice called their summer paradise.
Elizabeth Minett has appeared in videos with U.S. singer Hilary Duff and on season 12 of Get Out!, a television series featuring gorgeous women in non-stop activity at sunny resorts.
“I can’t remember what he said to me,” the Mirror quoted her as saying about her first Toronto encounter with the goalie. “I just remembered his British accent. I did not know who he was.”
