Some footy shorts...

I dunno if anyone’s ever said this after a keeper has conceded nine, but Chris Kirkland for England! The Wigan keeper – desperately unlucky to be attributed an own goal after Spurs’ eighth cannoned in off the post and the back of his head – somehow limited Spurs to just the one in the first half, and kept the score closer to ten than fifteen in the second. The Wigan players are personally refunding their travelling fans, but their keeper should not have to share in the embarrassment.
Kirkland’s only England cap came back in 2006, his family famously winning close to £10,000 after his father placed a bet that the young keeper would one day play for England when he was just 13. He’s since become the forgotten man of the England goalkeeper’s set-up. But with neither David James, Robert Green nor Ben Foster convincing when Capello asks them to step up and seize hold of the No.1 jersey, I might just put a little bet of my own on that the Wigan stopper will be on the plane to South Africa. One thing’s for sure, with that defence in front of him, he’ll be getting a lot of practice the next few months!

Jermain Defoe's five goals stole the headlines after Spurs’ drubbing of Wigan on Sunday, but his supply-man from the right wing deserves an equal share of the plaudits. As well as bagging the fifth himself, Aaron Lennon got a hat-trick of assists, displaying a mastery of the final ball which he so frustratingly lacked a year ago. Spurs’ fourth goal showed a telepathy between the pair: Lennon reached the by-line and delivered an inch-perfect cut-back, Defoe showing brilliant movement to dart from the back post to the front and sweep home on the volley into the near corner. Their irresistible in the white of Spurs, and yet put in relatively meek displays in the white of their national side. Forget what colour your boots are Jermain, why not try and send the boys out there wearing their Spurs shirts for England.
Except that, knowing our press – who have been the 2018 World Cup bid’s worst enemy in a way totally abhorrent to the bid rivals’ media – we’d be the ones that dob them in!

The self-fulfilling prophecy of Darren Fletcher:
The Scottish midfielder has gone from also-ran to main man in the United midfield, and it seems to me, all because of that red card in the Champions League semi-final. As Xavi, Iniesta and co. brushed United aside in Rome, both Red Devils’ fans and press commentators bemoaned tough-tackling Fletcher’s absence, forgetting that he was never exactly first name on the team-sheet. Except this year, he is, and delivering the kind of performances – and the kind of sumptuous half-volleys needed for any best-bits package – that will put him in the running for players’ prizes at the end of the season.
Thankfully, when we’re told that John O’Shea will one day emerge from the shadows to be one of Europe’s best defenders, we’ve always got this to fall back on, the quip that I saw filling many a billboard in America: ‘Economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions’.

Finally, the group stages of the Champions League seem worthwhile. And I don’t say that just to gloat at Liverpool’s elimination.
The 2005 winners travelled to Debrecen last night knowing that their qualification for the knockout stages of the premier club competition was not in their control. They did their bit, but Fiorentina’s defeat of Lyon taught Rafa Benitez a hard lesson - that no longer can an English side turn up to the group stages with comfortably short of their ‘A game’ and take qualification for granted.
Group F was the most fascinating, though, where, despite the presence of Barcelona and Inter Milan, it is the Russians Rubin Kazan - enjoying their first Champions League campaign – who held the cards going into the penultimate round of games. They handed Barcelona – and particularly Inter Milan, who went down 2-0 in the Nou Camp – a reprieve by failing to score at home to Dynamo Kyiv. As it stands, a victory for Jose Mourinho’s side in the San Siro in two weeks’ time will still ensure qualification. But, putting paid to the old excuses that Russian and Ukrainian teams will only cause problems to the big boys when they’re at home – factors such as weather and travel time making the east of the continent ‘a hard place to go’ - Rubin beat Barcelona in the Nou Camp last month. Interestingly, Group F is the only one where all four teams were domestic title winners.
Alongside Rubin and Dynamo – who may still qualify themselves – come CSKA Moscow, still in with a chance of making it out of Group B, and Romanian side Urinea Urziceni – managed by former Chelsea winger Dan Petrescu – sitting pretty in second place in Group G. Eastern Europe is having a strong season in the Champions League. Are the rest getting closer to the best? And, if the number of games played in Europe is eventually reduced – as it surely must be – will it be the third and fourth place teams from England, Italy, Spain who miss out, as opposed to the champions of ‘lesser’ footballing nations who are increasingly holding their own?
Of course, we’ll be oblivious to all of this, as ITV show the almost completely irrelevant Man United – Besiktas game this evening.

Blackburn midfielder David Dunn is a joy to watch – boundless energy, enthusiasm, a new-found defensive work ethic now he’s been given more responsibility as part of a central-midfield pairing, and fantastic ability on the ball in a charmingly loping, not-a-natural-athlete kind of a way. That is all.

'A replay would be a farce - I would have put my hand out'

Barack Obama has this evening called an emergency meeting with FIFA President Sepp Blatter to demand that France’s World Cup play-off victory over the Republic of Ireland be replayed.

No, not really. I wouldn’t be too surprised though, after a week in which a footballing debate has looked like boiling over into a major diplomatic situation. Irish PM Brian Cowan waded in, backing up the Football Association of Ireland’s (FIA) demands that the game be replayed. Thankfully, his counterpart Mr Sarkozy stayed well clear.

Yesterday, in Ipswich, Roy Keane added his penny’s worth as he has done so many times before. Asking the former Ireland captain of an FAI that had asked for the sympathy of the world is like leaving your four-year-old unattended in front of his Christmas presents. I haven’t seen footage of the interview, but I doubt he needed a second invitation to unleash another torment of spite.

This time though, I agree with Keano. A replay would be a farce, setting a terrifying precedent. Where would it stop?

It was easy to call for a replay after Henry’s handball, so closely connected to the scoring of the decisive goal, in extra-time of the decisive game for qualification for South Africa. The last time we saw the French captain’s bad side on the world stage was in the second round of the 2006 World Cup, when he went down clutching his face after receiving no contact from Carlos Puyol. A free-kick was awarded, which led directly to France’s second goal in a 3-1 win. So how about replaying that one?

I’ve thought about this quite a bit in the past – chain reaction within a football match. What if, when I receive the ball at left back in the third minute, I decide to pass precisely infield to the holding midfielder, and not, as is customary, lump it up the wing towards the striker? Every single event in that match would unfold differently thanks to that one decision.* So, what if there’s a mistaken refereeing decision in the opening minute… which leads to a free-kick to the blues, a throw in to the reds… and fifteen minutes later the goal that decides the trophy? Can you appeal that one?

Where, and when, would the replays stop? As I saw suggested yesterday, why not replay that match in… 1986, was it?, when that little Argentinean chap scored a goal with his hand? Great entertainment perhaps, just in seeing if that now slightly larger Argentinean chap can still run about, but ludicrous. You’ve got to play the game, accept it for what it is. FIFA - please FIFA don’t buckle – have got it right in refusing the replay this time.

So, if we aren’t going to give Ireland another go, what are we going to do to make sure the poor underdogs can’t be ‘cheated’ out of their dream by the big, bad World Cup veterans in the future?

Get the decisions right in the first place. Predictably, this latest high-profile incident has brought renewed calls for video refereeing technology, alongside the labelling of Thierry Henry as a ‘cheat’. I say no to both.

The Telegraph’s Henry Winter – and he is a long way from being alone – is of course paid to give us his opinion, but in calling for Henry ‘to be banned from playing in the World Cup’, he should have kept quiet.

Rather than ‘cheat’, the word I want to use for Henry is ‘human’. I believe that he handled the ball using little more than instinct, an urge that we all have to stop a ball that’s going past us, any way possible. If he did have just the split-second to think, then the striker chose goal over fair play. If he had time for perspective, then he chose to try and escape the scathing judgements of an expectant nation – and probably his manager’s job – over honesty. Who could blame him? I’ll put my hand up – or perhaps out – and say that I would have done it.

Like the referee and his assistants who missed the infringement, he got it wrong, made the wrong call. The human errors made by player and officials, although different, are inextricably linked.

Calls to turn the officials into robots are far from new, but, what about the player? We could turn him into someone who wouldn’t break the most fundamental rule of outfield football in order to assist and score goals, who wouldn’t dive or even ‘make the most of’ an opportunity to convince the referee he’d been fouled, who wouldn’t bend any rule in order to win, to fulfil his ambition, escape the pressures that demand victory and the fears of failure.

But then, he’d never yearn to feel what Marco Tardelli did**, he’d never be able to improvise, come up with the unfathomable like Ronaldinho did, never push himself beyond the edge of human exertion like Roy Keane did***, or, for that matter, come up with the unpredictable brilliance of Thierry Henry.

If we want to accept the best our, human, footballers have to give us, then we’ve got to accept the worst too. And Mr Henry’s actions on Wednesday night were an awful long way from the worst.

* Of course, it goes on from there outside the game – what if Mark Robins hadn’t scored that goal to save Fergie’s job in January 1990?

** My favourite goal celebration of all time - Tardelli scores for Italy in the 1982 World Cup Final and runs back shouting his own name, like a child living out his dreams

*** Fergie's comments on Roy Keane's heroic performance against Juventus in the 1999 Champions League semi-final:
"It was the most emphatic display of selflessness I have seen on a football field. Pounding over every blade of grass, competing if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose, he inspired all around him. I felt it was an honour to be associated with such a player."