New Football FanCast columnist Oscar Pye-Jeary reflects on Mousier Henry’s midweek antics.

So the French are leaping for joy and the Irish are hopping mad, and I’m trying to decide how tasteful it would be to get a reference to frogs or leprechauns into that sentence. And no matter how inappropriate, it would be fitting, as the passions of the World Cup, with all their jingoistic garnishing have been at the forefront of our beloved sport this week. As have two of the most prominent talking points to arise in the game in the last 10 or so years. Cheating and Video technology.

The use of video technology, or any technology for that matter, remains a hot potato in football, and one that never seems to go away, yet annoyingly, never gets eaten either. I doubt Michel Platini’s rather reactionary view will have changed much this week seeing as it was his country which benefited from a rather scandalous combo of officiating and sportsmanship this Wednesday in Paris. As an Englishman, it was very interesting (and, let’s be completely honest here, slightly amusing) to see another country, especially one so close to ours both historically and geographically, get so riled up in a fit of national outrage. This is usually our party piece specialty. Ever since our own experience of being finger banged out of a World Cup, we’ve taken great pride in our favourite national pastime of viciously vilifying one individual for denying us of our sacred right to lift that weirdly ugly statue of a snooker ball in a roll of golden socks. To see another of the Home Nations (liberally speaking) so wrapped up in the injustice of it all, complete with the obligatory pointless government intrusion, brought home just how futile it all is. Not that we didn’t already really know that. As a match going England fan I tire of the stereotypes attached to us but am all too aware just why they are still so prevalent. You’ve never quite witnessed stupidity until you’ve watched a hundred drunken Englishmen singing “10 German Bombers” at full volume in a German market square at lunchtime.

And so it was Thierry Henry, former darling of the English Premier League and shifty razor salesman that became the pantomime villain for the Irish on Wednesday. Drifting past two French players in offside positions to delicately control a flighted cross with a beautifully synchronized arm/hand maneuver to set up William Gallas to nod France onto the plane to South Africa. So blatant was the foul that he not only controlled it with his arm, but actually seemed to catch the ball and place it on his foot for the decisive touch across goal.  Neither linesman nor referee saw any of the incidents, the goal stood, and Henry compounded his antagonist portrayal by wheeling away victorious like he’d just scored a bicycle kick back heel from the half way line that had also miraculously rid the world of swine flu. The sense of injustice was further hardened by the fact the Irish had clearly deserved to win, outplaying France both home and away and missing several chances in the process. Those are the facts…now, what can be done about it?

Well, nothing really. While Henry certainly didn’t cover himself in glory it’s hard to know what he should have done. The touch itself was instinctive at worst, rather than malicious. Certainly he shouldn’t have celebrated as raucously as he did, but are we expecting him to have held his hands up instantly and told the referee to not award the goal? Should he have knelt down and prayed for forgiveness from the almighty Zidane, sitting regally in the stands? An opinion rife on message boards at the moment is that the truly great and honorable players don’t do such underhanded things. This is clearly rubbish, Maradona is obviously a clear example, and has yet to even acknowledge there was anything wrong with his antics. Zindane himself hardly has a great track record of keeping a cool and professional head on during crucial World Cup matches. Even the quiet and unassuming Paul Scholes was sent off last year for punching the ball into the net (brilliantly I might add) in the Super Cup Final. Henry did at least acknowledge his actions afterwards, which leads me my next point. Should the referee have asked him? It seems such a simple thing to do, and yet something rarely ever practiced. Now, asking a player if he dived or not is hardly ever going to illicit a true response but in some cases it may. Robbie Fowler, in possibly the greatest act of sportsmanship I have ever seen, once begged the referee not to award a penalty he had just won on the grounds the on rushing keeper didn’t touch him. But this kind of honesty is few and far between you may say. True, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Had Henry been asked, and willfully lied, then we could vilify him, my hunch is that he wouldn’t of. But you never know I suppose.

Another opinion banding around is that FIFA appear corrupt and clearly wanted his outcome. Well, both are undoubtedly true, though not necessarily combined. While we’re talking about FIFA we might as well chuck UEFA in there too, they’re both run by selfish idiots with personal agendas so clear they couldn’t be more blatant if they wrote them on their vests and lifted their shirts over their heads in celebration after every meaningless awards ceremony. The initial accusation that they had changed the rules regarding seeding for the play off’s is not strictly true. Seeding has been used in the last few World Cups, it’s only European Championships were they are not used. However the draw was hardly too harsh on Ireland, they had the beating of France anyway and would likely have struggled against Russia or Portugal. As for fixing the game itself, well, I see that as a very hard thing to do. However, anyone who watched South Korea’s farcical progress through the World Cup in 2002 will have their suspicions that FIFA can and do rig matches for political purposes. On those occasions Spain and Italy lost out to an unfortunate case of dementia that affected all the officials in their respective matches against Korea. 3 wrong offside calls made at one on ones, two legitimate goals rules out, a penalty denied with the obstructed player then being sent off for diving and a cacophony of unpunished fouls form the Koreans made for one of the most blatant cases of ‘robbery’ in modern football. As for Ireland, well they weren’t given any dodgy offsides and could and should have wrapped the game up with Duff through on goal in the second half.

As for replaying the game, well that would set a very dangerous precedent for football as a whole. So what really can be done?…Well, the only thing left is consistent moral outrage, endless whining and media witch-hunts. If you need any help with that, just look across the water to see how it’s done.

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