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….

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.