Reaction to France’s win was understandable but totally wrong

I wanted to leave it a few days before commenting on the “hand of God” goal scored by Thierry Henry to take France to the World Cup finals and eliminate the exceptionally unlucky Irish. Many people made some huge statements in the aftermath of the game and maybe regret some of the things that were said. The Sky TV commentator, for instance, at the end of the game said, “Ireland have been cheated out of a place at the World Cup.”

Cheating

Before I go on I would like to make a couple of things clear. Firstly, I do not condone cheating in any way whatever and truly wish that it could be eliminated from our great game. Secondly, I thought the Irish team were magnificent and deserved to go through and I felt genuinely sorry for them.

The outrage shown towards Henry, the referee and FIFA has been perhaps understandable but in my opinion has been both way over the top and incredibly hypocritical.

Sensible

The calls for video evidence are sensible and worth debating, but a replay was definitely not the answer and I think we should be careful before words such as ‘cheat’ are bandied about. The accusation that FIFA somehow manufactured the result to ensure that the mighty France qualified and little Ireland didn’t is simply preposterous.

I know how important the game was and if a team I supported had fallen foul to such an incident then I would have been furious, but we do need to keep things in perspective. Mistakes and incidents like this happen every week. They are part of football.

Disallow

The reason I believe that the reaction is hypocritical is because I do not think there is a player in the world who would have told the referee to disallow the goal because he had handled the ball. The suggestion is laughable. Twice in the game Robbie Keane was penalised for handling the ball in the French penalty area. If the free-kick hadn’t been awarded does anyone seriously think that Keane wouldn’t have carried on and attempted to score?

The suggestion that the referee was somehow biased towards France is also totally wrong. I think everyone agreed what a fine job he was doing in the game prior to that goal and if he wanted to help France he had the perfect opportunity when Shay Given committed a challenge that many referees would have awarded a penalty for. Also, let’s be honest, it wasn’t the referee who missed the chances to make the game safe, it was Duff and Keane.

Wrong

The criticism of FIFA is also not fair in this case. I am no big fan of FIFA and I think they were very wrong to make such a late decision to seed the play-offs. It is that decision that has left them open to these sort of allegations, but the game was played on a level playing field.

We have calls for managers to be given huge touchline bans and hefty fines when they dare to criticise a refereeing decision, yet in this case it seems perfectly OK to criticise officials, call players cheats and attack the governing body of the sport. As I say, it all seems slightly hypocritical.

Balance

The replay was never an option for any number of reasons. What would happen if the score was 1-0 to Ireland and Robbie Keane or Damian Duff were through, one on one with the keeper. The keeper dives and Duff or Keane hit the deck. I am not calling either of them cheats but it isn’t stretching it too far to say that their balance in the opposition penalty area has sometimes been questionable in the past. The referee awards the penalty and Ireland win. Video replays show that there was no, or minimal, contact. Do we have to have another replay?

Of course I understand why the Irish are upset, angry and frustrated, but the reaction is emotional rather than rational. Thierry Henry is not the reincarnation of the Devil and FIFA have not cheated.