THIERRY HENRY: The hand seen round the world

    The French striker was never this famous at any time in his distinguished career.  Near to the post, he flicks the ball from left to right with a killer pass across the face of the goal, and his teammate scores with his head from close in.  France advances to the World Cup finals in South Africa next year; Ireland is eliminated.  End of story.
    But no, it wasn’t.  Before the pass, Henry had deliberately brought the ball under control with his left forearm and hand.  The all-seeing eye of the camera captured and transmitted the illegal act for the entire football world to see, except for the referee and his assistant.  How could they miss such a blatant act of illegal play?  Let’s take a look, and more to the point, let’s see what we must learn from it.

    The video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdFvnRZe1i0) shows several of the elements we look for to identify deliberate handling.  1. An arm stretched out in an “unnatural” position, making the body of the player larger than normal.  2. In order to bring the ball under control, Henry moves his hand and arm towards the ball to make contact with it.  No doubt about the infraction, is there?  Then why wasn’t it penalized?  Take a look at this drawing from the Times.

    The ball comes to Henry from a free kick outside the penalty-area on the right.  The referee is standing outside the top left-hand corner of the penalty-area, cut off from a view of the incident by three players around Henry.  The assistant is almost in line with the last-but-one defender, but in-line or not, he cannot make the call, because the position of the goalkeeper hides Henry’s activities from his sight.

    Inevitably, there was uproar in soccer’s world.  The referee went into hiding, and so upset was he by the persistent and public criticism that he contemplated retiring at the age of only 38.  Only when he saw the drawings here (he saw them in the Times of London) did he declare that he would not quit because the figures exonerated him and his assistant by showing that the officials could not have seen the incident. 

    Every newspaper I looked at cried out for TV replays during matches.  Commentators (you’d think they would know better what the laws say) howled for a replay.  Ireland even made a petition to FIFA for a rematch, and Henry himself, with a smile that I interpreted as a combination of French hubris and sly Gallic humor, said that a replay would be the fairest solution.

    Now I read the Ireland F.A. is asking to be admitted as team number 33 in the finals!  Hah!  They might as well search for a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, such chance as they have with that request.  (After I wrote this paragraph, the request was denied.)

    But notwithstanding howlings from the press, tears from a disappointed nation, criticism from armchair referees, and observations from “expert” referees who SHOULD be armchaired, what does Henry’s hand mean?  Tomorrow I’ll give you my ten cents’ worth.  You might be surprised…

Comments

[HK Ref]

FIFA has concluded there is "no legal foundation" to punish Thierry Henry for his handball in France's World Cup finals play-off victory over the Republic of Ireland. How convenient.

France's Thierry Henry escapes Fifa ban over handball
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8464797.stm

How strange then that there also appears to be "no legal foundation" to encourage fair play but FIFA still insists that teams respect "fair play". How convenient.

P.S. Dear Robert Evans, I (and I reckon I speak for many) hope you will begin to blog regularly again.