Henry - Photo Shay CCA
We watched yesterday as the sense of outrage grew across Ireland and the UK over the manner of their elimination from the World Cup. The BBC went big on the tale, having a live reaction piece running through a large part of the day as people slowly came to realise the brutal truth that it was incredibly unfair, and that there was nothing that could be done about except learn from it for the future. Everything that could be said about the incident was said - but in the effort for originality, it was a couple of articles in the Daily Mail that really caught our eye.
The first looked like the fruit of Googling Thierry Henry + handball + not against Ireland but before:
Short memory, Thierry? When handball Henry raged about his Arsenal ‘goal disallowed for… handball
As the fallout from Thierry Henry’s ‘Hand of Le God’ incident in the World Cup play-off continues, we have been left wondering at what point the Barcelona striker lost his moral compass.
When Henry bagged a goal for Arsenal in the Champions League against CSKA Moscow in 2006, it was struck off after the referee judged he had handled before scoring. And the Frenchman exploded with rage at the official’s decision.
After the Gunners’ defeat in Moscow he squealed: ‘I’m more than angry. If you look at the replay, you will see it was not handball. I was shocked that the referee gave me a yellow. It was a good goal.’
But now Henry is the one to have benefitted it’s different, simply a case of c’est la vie.
After the draw with Ireland he shrugged his shoulders and claimed ‘I’m not the referee’ and expects us all to swallow the most blatant piece of cheating we’ve seen in decades.
On the night in Moscow he implored: ‘Look at the replays, go on. I asked the ref and he said he couldn’t tell me why he gave the handball. Only the linesman, who was 60-yards away, gave it but I asked him what he saw and he couldn’t tell me.’
Henry also added: ‘But you know what they say, what goes around, comes around.’ Quite.
But the referee’s actions that night in Moscow only cost Arsenal a single point in Europe. Henry’s cheating has cost Ireland a place at the World Cup Finals.
What on earth is the point of this? The author tries to dress it up as a question of his moral compass going awry, but evidently none of this supports that. He scored a goal (legitimately, he felt) which was disallowed. He was upset. Three years later, he assisted the scoring of a goal (illegitimately, he knew) which was allowed. He was happy and relieved.
Actually, that’s fairly consistent behaviour. It doesn’t point to a change in outlook somewhere in the intervening years, and it points to the morality of many sportsmen who will bemoan their bad luck and accept their good luck. Henry’s consistency is actually quite clearly framed in the point that ‘what goes around, comes around’ - for him, that seems more than apt. And anyway, what should he have said in 2006? ‘I don’t care about the referee making a mistake because I know I’ll get a sweet advantage out of that another day?’ Arsenal fans would have loved that.
But that’s not the most ridiculous article in their sports pages today. This tops it:
Sportsmail’s guide to the top 10 worst Frenchmen ever
You couldn’t make it up. Obviously, it’s there for you to read it yourself should you so wish. We’ll just run down the list for now:
1. Marquis de Sade
2. Napoleon Bonaparte
3. Jean Marie le Pen
4. Michel Platini
5. Mathieu Bastereaud
6. Albert Camus/Jean Paul Sartre/Rene Descartes
7. Jean Michel Jarre
8. Marcel Marceau
9. Louis XIV
10. Arthur Bostrom (plays French policeman in ‘Allo ‘Allo)
Quite wonderful. We can just about see why the man who spawned the term ’sadist’ might be worse than Henry, and the same with the ruthless conqueror and the extreme right leader. But the philosophers/novelists? Curse them for thinking! And the Europop fella - he’s about as ‘worst Frenchmen’ as they come - even more than Marceau, who might only have mimed handballing in Henry’s situation. And as for naming a fictional policeman in an English TV show on your top 10? Well, if that’s the worst France has got then let’s just be grateful for that.
