Oop, sorry, that last paragraph was meant for another blog.

Posted from  United States

@sandrahn
yes especially french players from metropolitaine because they have no manners

Posted from  United States

La maniére francaise: corriger la fortune. Bah !

sandrahn:
Henry-haters? U kidding ? Any morals gone overboard, huh ?!

Worst of luck to France in South Africa.
Boohs for them in every match (hopefully just four).

Laurie, I think I liked the first picture better. It was slightly more pathetic (like our team).

Ha. Maybe I’ll include them both.

As Sandrahn posted the blog from an Irish reporter, I really would like to know how come no one is grilling Given for tripping Anelka?
How come he didn’t tell the Ref. that he just committed a foul in the box?

The Keane comment should end all debate. It won’t, but it should.

I feel a bit confident, knowing that if we have a healthy squad, even with our dimwit of a coach we are in with a shot.

I’m not sad, just frustrated. But as a Barca fan, I’ve been through it before with the Chelsea match last season, where we were labeled “cheats” because of a poor ref, just like Henry. That’s life, and the howls of the allegedly aggrieved.

Is it just me , or the comment area is formatted really weird today? Hmmm…

Posted from  France

Shame to French President.
Shame to FIFA
Shame to Thierry Henry
What is there being proud to reach the world cup final throuh cheats.
I like to see a replay to settle the issue.
I like to see a ban on Henry for the world cup.
I like to see Barcelona sack Henry.
FIFA don’t let the second mistake go on unpunished from the first infamous Maradonna hand again England.

Posted from  Singapore

one of the tragedies from this whole debacle, besides the misfortune of the irish fans, is that noone is talking about how poorly france played and how completely outcoached domenech was for 120 mins.

domenech has the perfect distraction from having to actually talk about what happened to his team on the pitch.

Posted from  United States

A wonderful interview which talks not just of the obvious hanball but his comport after.

Enjoy
LONDON: Football legend Eric Cantona has said that he would have hit striker Thierry Henry if he was one of the Republic of Ireland players
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cheated of their World Cup spot.
The former France and Manchester United star said: “What shocks me the most quite frankly, is not the hand-ball.
“What shocks me the most is that this player, at the end of the game, in front of the TV cameras, went to sit down next to an Ireland player to comfort him – when he had just screwed him.”
Cantona could not believe Henry chose to sit and chat with Republic of Ireland defender Richard Dunne after his handball set up William Gallas for the goal, which ended Ireland’s World Cup dream in Paris.
Cantona, infamous for his kung-fu kick at a fan, added: “If I had been an Irishman, he wouldn’t have lasted three seconds.”
Henry has finally admitted that the World Cup qualifying play-off should be replayed.
“The fairest solution would be to replay the game but it is not in my control,” The Sun quoted him, as saying.
The incident has destroyed Henry’s reputation as a football ambassador.

Regards

Posted from  Canada

Now that I am out of a state of shock, I can see that Henry really isn’t a cheater. Someone made the point that soccer is played in real time. All the media does is show it in slow motion, which really makes Henry look like a cheater. In Henry’s defense, he is 33 and it was the 103rd minute. He must have been fucking exhausted, you could tell he was not on the top of his game. His reactions made him reach for it, and there was no whistle, so why waste the perfect chance?

Thanks for including my video on the thread. I am amazed at the attention it has gotten, I only expected a couple hundred views, at this rate it will make it to 100k! I think a lot of people are using this incident to let out racist comments. I had to remove countless racist comments from my video, but I gave up now. People are calling Henry “classless” using classless language. Also they say they’ve “lost all respect” for Henry and the French, when they don’t bring much respect themselves. I would appreciate criticism, but true criticism….Also, if you would like go on it and give it 5 stars, the haters kind of destroyed the rating.

Posted from  United States

Doume, it’s not just you. It happens occasionally (but only in some browsers) and I haven’t been able to figure out which coding quirk is causing it. If it drives you insane, everything looks normal in Firefox.

Lefutur, I’m in complete agreement. The only person I’ve seen who brought up how horrible France looked was Bixente Lizarazu. And when it comes to preparing for SA, the handball is meaningless. The play isn’t.

Jean-François, I’m going in to give you five stars right now.

Laurie,
Thanks for the browser info; I’m using IE7. Not fun to scroll back and forth left and right.
Basically the French commentary from Larqué/Wenger was all about how France sucked (more from Larqué actually) so it’s nothing new to me. I still insist on the fact we need to put together a defense, because without some bad booboos from Mexes and Escudé, we would never had to face Ireland in the first place.
BUT I believe that the Irish executed wonderfully a game plan which was to hamper anything going on the midfield, absolutely disrupt, destroy, frustrate, any attempt at construction like the French like to do. They were great at it, intercepting and robbing all they could, imposing a pace which was not suiting France at all. I figured that the physical demands for that pressing game are huge and they would eventually get tired, which they did, but later than I thought, like around the 70th minute, where France started taking control and -yes- dominating in general. In some ways I have rarely seen that quality and intensity of pressing other than that from Ireland – not with Serbia or Romania or Austria …maybe Portugal in 06, and even…so the French team we saw was guilty to not have anticipated what tactical changes the Greens would do and sort of taking the game where they had left it on Saturday night. It was pitiful for the most part but I don’t think it’s quite illustrative of what they can really do; they were way too predictable in their passes and directions. One guy like Ribéry would have introduced something a little different, just like what Govou and Malou brought in a lesser way.
But, to be frank, the Irish, while they played that press game very well, didn’t construct a whole lot of stuff, and many of their attacks ended across the sideline.

And, Inara, I really think if I was in the same room as Roy Keane, I’d make sure I put my phone on “silent”

Posted from  France

I agree with Lefutur. I’ve been a moderate, relatively, about Domenech, but that performance was pathetic, and I want him gone more than ever.

Keep it simple:

Ireland would be going to the World Cup if

the Assistant Referee and Center Referee were in their correct position (Can someone tell me why the center referee was standing closer to the kicker on a free kick in such an important game?? and the AR needs to be much closer to the goal line when Henry handles the ball — look where he is standing when Henry handles the ball !!! — Maybe they need to be in better physical shape

the Irish coaching staff and players should have held up the restart of game until they showed the center referee a video of the handball. A referee can overturn a call easily before the restart of play.

The powers that be could also have showed the infamous handball on the stadium screen like they did with Zidane and the ref subsequently gave him a delayed red card because of the video. (I think the game was played in France so this might be asking the French to be too honest)

In the future, get with the 21st or 20th century and allow officials to view replays of videotape clips. Its not like they score many goals in World Cup matches.

Posted from  United States

Some good points Mike. It’s ridiculous that they refuse to use video to make correct decisions.

I was thinking about buying one of those new jerseys, only one problem… Whose name should I have on the back? I was going to have Hanry given this will probably be his last WC, but I’m afraid of assassination at this point. Maybe Gallas? Or a prospect for the future? (Gourcuff, Gignac, Benzema, Govou) my current one,(the 09 one with the crazy blue blue stripes) has Nasri on it, but I’m afraid (in the eyes of domenech) that he is a lost cause.

Also. I was thinking, Les bleus have been in my mind constantly for about 2 weeks now. And there will not be another game until Spring most likely. What is there to do? I was thinking watch some champions league, but I think that I need to do something else. Twittling my thumbs isn’t working

Posted from  United States

I seem to be doing a lot of cross posting lately, but too many places to post and not enough words in the English language (or in French, for that matter).

So if Ireland deserve a replay, then so does France. Both teams were unjustly punished by referring errors, mistakes which could have changed the fate of qualification.

In the first leg, at Croke Park, Evra ought to have been given a penalty in the second half, and had France scored from that penalty, the outcome of the following match may have been entirely different, just as the outcome of the match in France might have been different had Henry’s goal been discredited and the game gone on to penalties.

Henry scored from a handball that the referee did not see, and Given got away with fouling a player in the penalty area. Both players broke the rules of the game, though in both cases, it wasn’t deliberate cheating (and sorry, I don’t buy that Henry set out to cheat – that requires premeditation, which is impossible in the quarter-second that Henry, who was moving at high speed across a crowded and slippery area, had in order to react).

I just don’t see why everyone is coming down on France for not owning up to their lack of fairplay. I don’t recall Given going to the referee after tripping Evra and admitting that France deserved a penalty. Nor do I remember hearing the FFF demanding a repeat of the game or the Irish FA offering one.

Yes, it’s unfortunate that Ireland had to go out this way, and Henry’s goal should have been disallowed. But this overreaction – that France are a nation of cheaters, that Henry lost all his class from one incident, and the demands that France ought to be be disqualified from the WC are over the top.

After all, Ireland should have been disqualified from the playoffs. Their undeserved penalty against Georgia is what even allowed them to play the qualifiers – where was Ireland’s class when they didn’t admit to the ref that they didn’t deserve that penalty? Or did the Irish players do the smart thing and take advantage of the referee’s mistake so that they could still have a chance at making it to the World Cup?

High standards are all well and good, but they need to be applied fairly and evenly across all nations and in all games. And if that’s the case, then Ireland has no more right to be at the World Cup than France.

Clearly, Georgia are the ones who truly got robbed.

PS: I don’t mean to come across as heartless, as I do feel for the Irish, but replays are not the answer. Every game has its share of bad calls, it’s human nature as the match officials cannot be everywhere at once, and football is a sport meant to be played in real time. If the match was replayed, then another call would bound to be called into question. So then what, do we do another replay?

Where does the line get drawn? Henry didn’t mean to cheat, his handball just happened instinctively. How is that any different than a defender getting away with a bad tackle? What will happen to football if suddenly all nations are demanding replays because of penalties unfairly given (or not given), of unjust expulsions, and of goals unfairly given or discredited?

These are questions that need to be answered before the idea of a replay can be taken seriously. Just because this is a match with high stakes doesn’t isn’t an excuse – all competitive matches are high stake, whether in club or international football.

At the end of the day, a replay wouldn’t accomplish anything except more controversy.

The thing is…what if the ref in the replay makes a mistake!?

Will they have a re-replay!?

And what if after that there’s another disputed call by the ref? ANOTHER re-re-replay?

Posted from  United Kingdom

Yeah. Re-re-re….play. Miggy is right.

I did not see the whole match. I do see from the video replay that Henry touched the ball with his left hand twice in a second. He did admitted. He said, “replay” because he knew he would be punished!

I saw the video replay that the referee was 50 m away and probably block-viewed by 4 players. I am not sure whether the referee had consulted the lines men. I am not sure whether the lines men’s view were blocked. Why should the referee asked Henry? If you are a thief would you admit? Maybe, Henry’s conscience would had changed minutes after he was temped by evil to commit a saint. But seemed he didn’t. He only called for a replay when the issue had heated up.

The only one to blame is Henry and be punished.