Cheat Henry says "Replay the "fairest solution""
-
HENRY HANDBALL STORM
Cheatrry Henry: Replay the "fairest solution" for Ireland
knowing 100% well that the fifa would not allow it.
Thierry Henry has conceded that Republic of Ireland "definitely deserve" to qualify for the World Cup finals and has backed calls for a replay, even though FIFA have already ruled out such a scenario.
rance captain Henry has been at the centre of real controversy after he handled the ball in extra time before passing for William Gallas to score in Wednesday night's World Cup play-off between the two countries. That goal ensured Les Bleus won 2-1 on aggregate to qualify for the finals in South Africa.
The Football Association of Ireland made a formal complaint to FIFA but the governing body announced on Friday that they would not consider a replay of the game, with referee Martin Hansson's decision remaining final.
France coach Raymond Domenech does not believe his country should be forced to apologise for the referee's failure to spot the blatant handball but just hours after FIFA firmly ruled out a replay, Henry has stated he feels that would have been the fairest way to end the heated row.
"Naturally I feel embarrassed at the way that we won and feel extremely sorry for the Irish who definitely deserve to be in South Africa," said Henry. "Of course the fairest solution would be to replay the game but it is not in my control.''
Henry's character has been strongly called into question following the incident but the Barcelona striker is adamant that the handball was nothing more than an "instinctive reaction" and that he is not a cheat.
"There is little more I can do apart from admit that the ball had contact with my hand leading up to our equalising goal and I feel very sorry for the Irish," Henry said.
"I have said at the time and I will say again that yes I handled the ball. I am not a cheat and never have been. It was an instinctive reaction to a ball that was coming extremely fast in a crowded penalty area.
"As a footballer you do not have the luxury of the television to slow the pace of the ball down 100 times to be able to make a conscious decision. People are viewing a slow motion version of what happened and not what I or any other footballer faces in the game.
"If people look at it in full speed you will see that it was an instinctive reaction. It is impossible to be anything other than that. I have never denied that the ball was controlled with my hand. I told the Irish players, the referee and the media this after the game.''
Arsene Wenger, who signed Henry for Arsenal in 1999 and turned him into one of the Premier League's greatest ever players, has echoed the striker's calls for the game to be replayed.
Wenger - who famously agreed to a replay of an FA Cup tie against Sheffield United in 1999 - believes France have a responsibility to uphold the spirit of the game and make the gesture of a replay.
"I support France and it is embarrassing to qualify the way we qualified. We want to beat Ireland properly and that didn't happen,'' Wenger said. "At the end of the day you can talk and talk and talk, or you replay, or you don't replay.
"Thierry Henry was the big loser in this story. If he had come out [at the time] and said it was handball, half of France would have said, 'how crazy is he, not to get us to the World Cup?' If he doesn't say it straight away, he is also guilty. The problem is not Thierry Henry, it is above Thierry Henry.
"He played here for 10 years and has always been super fair. He has come out and said 'I made a mistake, I touched the ball with my hand'. That is honest. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again because we could see it every week.
"Football and sport in general is full of heroes who have cheated ten times more than Thierry. For me people who bought referees, who took drugs, they are the real cheats in sport. Thierry Henry has years of fair behaviour behind him and he today is singled out in the wrong way.
"A player of his stature has a massive pressure on his shoulders and if somebody has to do something for Thierry, it is French football and France as a country, not to leave him out there alone against the whole world. France has to say 'yes it was a handball and we offer a replay'.''
Wenger has long been an advocate of video technology to aid match officials - with events in Paris on Wednesday night once again opening the long-standing debate over just how to make sure the big decisions are always called correctly.
"What is terrible for the referee is that he gave the goal knowing something was not regular, yet he had no help,'' said Wenger. "I saw him walk from the linesman to the middle of the park, thinking 'I have to give that goal', knowing it is not a regular goal. That is where football is guilty.
"They [FIFA] have come out with a solution with one guy behind the goal, but the best one is technology. The biggest anger for me is that we are still in 2009, sitting here where millions of people see what happened, one guy doesn't see it and we can't help him. Football is the most popular sport in the world and we are still having to endure these kinds of mistakes.''
The Republic of Ireland would almost certainly not be able to challenge FIFA in the Court of Arbitration for Sport over replaying the World Cup play-off with France. The FAI are considering their next move - but any appeal to CAS looks unlikely to get off the ground.
Stephen Townley, a London lawyer who also acts as an arbitrator for CAS, said he believes the Lausanne-based court would not be able to become involved.
"Looking at FIFA's statutes, this would come under violation of the laws of the game, in which case CAS could not pick up the dispute," Townley said.
-
DES KELLY: Dishonest Thierry Henry drives us down a road of cameras
Taking us all for a ride: Thierry 'I'm no cheat' Henry is trying to salvage his tattered commercial reputation
What car did Thierry Henry famously advertise? Why a Renault, of course, silly. It couldn’t have been anything else.
Maybe he’ll deliberately steer his Clio into a wall at the Stade de France one day just to complete the circle of Gallic cheating.
Mr Va-Va-Voom surfaced again on Friday, announcing with exquisite timing that it would be ‘the fairest solution’ to replay the World Cup play-off decider against Ireland.
I say exquisite timing because this clarion call for justice came just a few hours after FIFA had announced categorically there was no absolutely no chance - none, nil, nul, nada - that the game would be replayed in the lifetime of this galaxy.
The perfect moment, then, for Henry to offer up his plea, in the vain hope that part of his shredded commercial image might be salvaged.
‘Yes, I handled the ball but I am not a cheat and never have been,’ he said. How odd. In the aftermath of the game his message was very different.
‘Look, I don’t make the rules,’ he shrugged. Oh no, forgive me, that was actually a scripted line from his Renault car advert, although this was pretty much what he was saying anyway after he steered the Republic of Ireland out of the World Cup.
Henry can now plan his summer in South Africa, review his agent’s suggestions for a positive publicity campaign and leave everyone else to pick up the pieces.
Amid the fuss, people scrabbled for solutions. Most were horribly familiar. But one plan was gaining ground among ex-referees and commentators. It was the suggestion that officials should simply ask players to admit whether they had cheated.
After giving this proposal an enormous amount of thought, applying some well-worn logic to the scheme and examining the pros and cons from every angle, my considered reaction is: HAHAHAHA!
The idea that the same football players who spend pretty much all their working hours actively trying to con officials, opponents and the public by diving, time-wasting, shirt-pulling, elbowing, appealing for corners and throw-ins, stealing yards at free-kicks, and generally utilising every trick in the book - and some that aren’t - to gain an unfair advantage, would suddenly default to ‘honest mode’ when a referee asked them if they had been a bad boy is truly delightful.
The trouble is, most of us know the average player would lie, take a chance on the subsequent video footage being inconclusive, or plot to overturn any subsequent punishment with an expensive lawyer.
There is no prevailing sense of honour in the game any more. There is no moral code. Rules are not there to be enforced, but to be flouted. Cheating is routinely described as ‘part of the game’. Cold, hard, cynical professionalism is the order of the day.
Henry summed it up when discussing the Irish debacle: ‘Should I stop and tell the referee? No. That is very funny. You are very funny.’
Oh, yes, Thierry. We’re all holding our sides. Meanwhile, old pros were loathe to condemn him, repeating the ‘it’s down to the referee’ mantra and boring us all with their ‘I would have done the same’ confessions.
David Beckham chipped in: ‘I honestly didn’t think Henry meant it. I don’t think he’s a cheat.’ Yeah, thanks David. Maybe try a little less of that thinking in future.
In this instance, Henry certainly is a cheat and, what’s more, he knows it. He just daren’t explicitly say as much. ‘It was necessary to exploit what was exploitable,’ he argued. Which sums up the situation nicely. Jonny Wilkinson, that fine English ambassador, put it in similar terms: ‘You get away with what you can,’ he said.
This attitude explains why cricketers claim false catches and batsmen refuse to walk when they have edged the ball. It is why cyclists and track and field athletes are constantly caught in drug stings.
When everyone else is doing it, cheating seems a rational choice. Expediency is the law. Being sportsmanlike actually takes an effort of will. It’s more natural today to try to cheat.
So if we cannot expect sportsmen - and footballers in particular - to improve their behaviour, we must find better ways of enforcing the laws.
For years I’ve argued there is no need for video evidence in football. I’ve said that human error is part of sport and the rules should be the same for all forms of the game, from the local recreation field all the way up to Wembley.
Sod that. Not any more. Not when one cheat can deny a country £1billion in revenue and a summer of unforgettable sporting history. Bring in the cameras.
Clubs and national federations already have to comply with basic standards of stadium facilities and security.
There is no reason why the same criteria cannot be applied to simple review technology.
The gadgetry is cheap, referees already wear earpieces and every match of consequence is televised these days, anyway. So it wouldn’t take much to double-check key moments. Britain has 4.2 million surveillance cameras. Point all of them at the pitch.
Its time has come.
-