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."
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