A defense of Henry's legacy, from unlikely sources.
Roy Keane (on Henry's left in the picture), the Ireland and Manchester United legend, on how Ireland need to get over it. (A hilarious interview, quite worth watching, especially the part where a reporter's cell phone goes off.) "Yeah, of course he handled it, but I'd focus on why didn't they clear it... Would I call [Henry] a cheat, no, I wouldn't think so."
Damien Duff, Ireland and Fulham winger (on Henry's right), on how he would have tried the stunt himself were he in that position. "I don't think you can blame Henry... if it was myself or Robbie [Keane] down at the other end, we would have tried it. You just expect the linesman or the referee to see it." (For the record, this is the position I've taken on the matter.) In fact, Robbie tried some trickery of his own during qualifying, and it worked quite well, thank you very much. Just ask Georgia about this little incident. Everyone seemed OK with it at the time...
Arseblogger (an Irishman himself) has been going nuts over the British press treatment of the issue, with defenses of Henry here and here.
Interesting to see how this will play out, especially now that the FAI's request has been denied. I can't lie, I would have loved to see a replay, just for the hell of it.
3 comments:
"Thierry Henry [and James Stanley] 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'.'"
-Arsene Wenger
Sorry I had to delete my first comment because it had a massive verb confusion issue that couldn't be left unresolved.
Moving on, what is so unreasonable about a replay starting at the beginning of extra-time? If not this scenario then there is no such scenario that exists to cause a replay. We're essentially saying nothing can cause a game to be replayed, ever.
I just really don't know what to say about the matter. I mean, I agree with some who say Henry shouldn't've. As a defender, screw all you forwards who do whatever you can to score. On the other hand, I do whatever I can to stop them from scoring, so I do understand it from that point of view.
Screw France - just because.
I think I'd be ok with a replay. It'd be one helluva game to watch.
Oh, right, and the refs totally blew it. How do they miss that. Oh, and the offsides.
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