(Feature photo: bobbymond.)
Soccer fans can get a little wacky about fouls. Catch them on a good day, and they’ll not only let you get away with a blatant, violent foul, like Zinedine Zidane’s infamous headbutt, but they’ll name you best player anyway. Catch them on a bad day, and they’ll start calling for your blood.
The second is what’s now happening to Thierry Henry. During a World Cup qualifier against Ireland last week, the French captain committed a handball while setting up a teammate for a goal. Because referee Martin Hansson didn’t see the foul, he had no choice but to allow the goal. As a result, France ended up winning 2-1, and Ireland lost its last chance to qualify for the World Cup.
The press exploded. The Daily Mail said that Henry had “blatantly cheated”, and questioned whether he would ever live down the foul. Former French international Eric Cantona said that he would have punched Henry, had he been on the Irish team.
“If I’d been Irish, he wouldn’t have lasted three seconds,” Cantona said.
‘La Mano de Dios’
At least one player has gotten away with a bigger handball in soccer history. In the 1986 World Cup finals, Diego Maradona scored the game-winning goal that way in a match against England. Because of the foul, Argentina took home the World Cup, and Maradona became a hero. There certainly weren’t any former Argentine players publicly fantasizing about beating him up.
Despite having owned up to his error soon after the game, Henry is catching much more flak. Henry told L’Equipe that the criticism directed at him was so strong that he briefly considered quitting international soccer.
In response to the controversy, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has called an emergency meeting for next week, at which it is widely expected that FIFA’s executive committee will recommend a rule change that would add two new assistant referees to the field.
Some officials have gone a step further, arguing that FIFA should introduce video replay to help referees make more accurate calls. Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, said that the technology was key to keeping the game fair.
“I like justice in sport and I believe football has a big responsibility today to see how we want international life to go on and to be an example for people who watch the game,” he said.
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Does Thierry Henry deserve what he’s getting? Should soccer refs have access to instant replay? Let us know in the comments.
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A bit iffy about a couple of the points here.
Argentina didn’t win the World Cup because of the foul. The England game wasn’t the final (it wasn’t even the semi-final). In spite of the handball, Argentina proved themselves the best team of the tournament and went on to be deserved winners, with Maradona the star player.
Nonetheless, had the incident happened today he may well have been getting more stick than Henry. The context is different – the media analysis of the game, the hunger for football stories and the money earned by Thierry Henry from sponsorship deals (and therefore the average football fans animosity towards him) is all much greater.
Cantona, meanwhile, is an amazing character (and footballer) who has an extremely troubled history with the French national team. In this context, his rent-a-mouth quote perhaps isn’t that surprising.
Speaking of amazing characters, Maradona dealt with the handball situation with far more panache than Henry has, as shown by his famous quote in which he said the goal was scored “a little bit by the head of Maradona and a little bit by the hand of God”.
The cases of Maradona and Cantona show that being a flawed genius (a quality that is not generally thought to be shared by Henry) goes a long way to getting you let off the hook by football fans.
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Hey Tom,
Thanks for the insightful comment. It’s actually not World Cup final – it’s World Cup FINALS, as in finals vs. qualifying.
I’d still say that Argentina took home the World Cup because of the “Mano de Dios”. That goal got them into the semi-finals: had it been disallowed, it’s very likely they never would have made it to the final match and won the tournament.
Dunno if I’d use “panache” to describe Maradona. It bothers me a little that fans are more willing to let off the man who wouldn’t acknowledge that he was in the wrong than the one who took the initiative to try and set things right. In the end, it seems like that’ll just encourage dishonesty in the game.
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I think Ireland deserve a replay. If no replay, then Henry shouldn’t play with the les blues in the world cup final. Fair enough?
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Wow, that’s pretty blatant.
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Not sure if I agree with the view that video evidence in football is the way forward. The stop-start nature of sports like American Football and Cricket lend themselves much better to the use of video evidence. In football it would have the potential to seriously break the flow of the game.
As for Henry – he had the option of fessing up and telling the ref directly after the goal was scored. Instead, he did a half lap of the stadium celebrating before then coming clean. That left the ref with little choice but to let the goal stand. However, a replay would set a dangerous precedent. Where do you draw the line for replaying games in the future? An unjust red card that led to playing part of the game with 10 men? An offside goal?
At the end of the day – it sucks and France should be truly ashamed, but that is football: Anything can happen and justice is not always done.
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How would they ever use video replays in a way that wouldn’t give soccer the same problems as American football? ie, interminable downtime in between plays? The flow that makes soccer so much more entertaining couldn’t be preserved, could it?
Thierry Henry doesn’t have Maradona’s and Cantona’s panache because he’s just a really good player, not a borderline nutcase who also happens to be a good player. Those kind of folks always make for better soundbites.
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Frankly everything about the whole saga has been cynical. Henry fouled badly, would the referee have cancelled out the goal had Henry owned up? No. Would FIFA have ever granted a replay? Never. This would have opened a pandora’s box of issues ranging in all games across the globe.
Henry owned up after FIFA made their declarations of not replaying the game. The French FA came forward to support their player well after all the serious abuse had passed.
Platini has said nothing. Very few others have spoken, very easy to see why given the advertising revenues of the French over the Irish. Justice would be to see Les Blues tumble out like in Korea/Japan without scoring a goal.
I feel for the Irish, I have my very real problems with the French team and with Henry but feel that something needs to change.
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Thanks for all the comments, everybody! A lot of fans and writers (Eduardo Galeano being a famous example) have criticized FIFA in the past for supposedly being hegemonic and maintaining dubious priorities that many people say have put the advertising/business side of soccer at an advantage at the detriment of the game itself. I’m not going to pass judgment on them one way or another, but it’s certainly interesting to see what they’ve chosen to do about the foul this time around.
Something else that’s kind of funny, a couple French computer programmers have created a game paying homage to Henry’s handball: http://www.jeu-de-main.com/
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Another update: FIFA decides not to seed France in World Cup draw: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/football/12/02/football.fifa.world.cup.seedings/index.html
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God I miss Cantona. Manchester just isn’t the same without him.
Ireland were utterly robbed. If it had been the other way round, the whole of France would no doubt be still out on strike, banging pans in the street and closing down their air space until something was done about it.
In a court of law you’re entitled to a fair trial but it doesn’t seem to hold for football. A country have lost their chance of going to the world cup because the referee was looking the other way. Of course video replay should be allowed.
For non-football fans, just to give you an idea of how important it all is, consider this. I’m English, my ex-boyfriend Argentinean. We were living in Spain but he came over to England with me for a few days last year. Not one person mentioned the Falklands War. Almost everyone we met brought up Maradona’s hand ball. Last year was 2008. That happened in 1986.
I can’t imagine Henri being very welcome in Ireland for ooh, say the next 250 years….
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