NRR: France's Hand-of-God goal v. Ireland

And before somebody comes on questioning my "it wasn't Henry's fault" comment, I want to clarify that the controversy surrounding the goal is not Henry's fault, it is the referee's. Yes, the handball was Henry's fault since it is his hand, but he was just playing soccer.

working link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4QS5RKhoY

Henry has admitted it was intentional.

MarathonMind wrote:

working link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4QS5RKhoY

Henry has admitted it was intentional.

bullshit. he admitted it was a hand ball. not that it was intentional. please shut up if you're going to make stuff up.

Absolutely not. Henry admitted that his hand touched the ball, that's all.Henry is not a cheat. It's a missed call by the ref."Oui, il y a main mais je ne suis pas l'arbitre."

MarathonMind wrote:

Henry has admitted it was intentional.

Look at his hand control at 1:33 of that video.

OK. I may have misinterpreted his admission of the "touch" as intentional, but if you look at 1:45 of the video it's pretty obvious he'd be lying if he denied that he meant to control the ball with his hand.

Sorry, I don't see it. I still think there is no way to know for sure. As I'm actually a fan of Thierry Henry (hard to admit these days!), I believe that was not intentional.

I'm not against a rematch or a series of penalty kicks to determine who should go to the World Cup. I'm heartbroken that France qualified that way.

11111111987 wrote:

So, interested observer, what do you think of the penalty that wasn't given to France?

Also, Trappatoni says that he doesn't blame Henry and that the game cannot be replayed. So, you know better than Ireland's coach? Good, just apply for the job then.

People like you do a great disservice to the Irish (you're probably just American anyway dreaming of being European because your last name sounds vaguely Irish). Stop being a crybaby. Next time, just win the game. You have 4 years to get better!

Alright I REALLY hope you get to see this response. have never in my life been so offended on a message board, and that is saying something. I AM irish. My last name is Irish, so is My first name. I was born in Dublin. My father is from mayo and my mother is from clare. You should not even START assuming shit about somebody you dont know.

If anything, the very fact that you're referring to Trap as "coach" rather that "manager" indicates to me that YOU'RE the non-irish one, as anyone with half a brain would realise that people like Alan Kelly are the coaches of the team, and that Trap is MANAGER. Liam Brady and Marco Tardelli are the assistants.

Onto the match, of course Trap would say that it wasn't Henry's fault. He has to say that. He's the manager. He has to be humble in defeat. Trap has been in the game for decades. He knows a thing or two about respect. Robbie Keane on the other hand, may not. This might explain why he went on BBC 5live radio yesterday and accused Fifa, more specifically Blatter and UEFA president Platini of being corrupt. Which i perfectly understand.

Trap didn't say specifically that the game couldn't be replayed. He said it was unlikely. The FAI have made a formal appeal to fifa to have that match replayed, as FIFA have replayed matches of lower significance before.. ie. the Bahrain match i alluded to eariler in the thread.

What do you mean, "people like me do a great disservice to Ireland"??? Is it a disservice that i want the best for my country? that i want justice to win out for MY nation??? Are the 88% of french people who said that they felt they didnt deserve to win the match doing a great disservice to their own nation too?

Back to the first line of your incredibly misguided post.

Anelka's penalty claim?? You mean the one where there was a clear foot between Given's hand and Anelka's foot when he crashed to the floor? Or do you just refuse to watch replays?

well said!

I'm American and actually like the Irish. I didn't mean to offend you. I wrote my post in jest!

I would have agreed that you couldn't tell if it was intentional or not if the camera angle at 1:45 in the above video didn't exist. Than angle CLEARLY shows his head following the flight of the ball as it is about to bounce past him, then his hand move to the ball to control it TWICE before he taps the ball to Gallas. This was 100% intentional.

just found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty5vgjMOsAI&feature=popular

Hilarious!

Since we're on the subject of replays - maybe the Irish will volunteer to replay this game first!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/7881893.stm

Yeah - didn't think so.

Again - I obviously agree they were robbed - and we need f****n video referees. But all this talk of a replay is nonsense.

A few things.

1) I'm shocked people want the game replayed. Never heard of it happening in any sport for one what a referee saw or didn't see.

2) I can't believe the French unions are all upset over the goal. I don't remember many soccer players going up to the ref and saying, "hey that was a mistake the goal shouldn't have been allowed." I guess if he did it on purpose they could be saying, "he shouldn't have done it."

3) where was the linesman?

He should have seen it it seems for sure.

As for the conspiracies against Ireland and an attempt to put France in that is a bit much. Isn't Ireland pretty decent. It seems like they would have rigged the draw and not have France play Ireland if they wanted France to get in the World Cup.

wejo wrote:

As for the conspiracies against Ireland and an attempt to put France in that is a bit much. Isn't Ireland pretty decent. It seems like they would have rigged the draw and not have France play Ireland if they wanted France to get in the World Cup.

It was slightly rigged. I'll explain in detail. There were 9 qualifying groups in europe, 8 groups had 6teams in them, the last one had only 4. The winners of each group qualified for the WC automatically while the 2nd place finishers in the 8 groupr went into a playoff. The powers that be in FIFA are Micheal Platini (FRENCH) and Sepp Blatter (GERMAN). Towards the end of the qualifying campaign when the final group standings were starting to take shape it looked like there would be the possibility that both FRANCE and GERMANY may finish 2nd in their groups and thus end up in the playoffs draw. This is where it starts to get sick, only then did they decide to change the rules of the playoff. Originally it was to be that it would be an even playing field and all teams could have been drawn against each other. Foreseeing this the (dick)HEADS at FIFA feared that France and germany could be drawn against each other, therefore automatically meaning that one of them would not go to the WC. SO they seeded the playoff draw, going by their individual FIFA world rankings none of the top four ranked teams could play each other, making it as easy as possible for the top four teams to qualify. As it turned out Germany topped their group but among the teams in the playoffs was Portugal who as most people know is the home nation of the biggest footballing star of the moment Ronaldo, thus FIFA wouldn't have wanted a France vs Portugal playoff either. So can can you understand why this whole situation is hard to accept and and has evoked such anger among us Irish. A prominant sponsor/organiser of next summers world cup was quoted as saying something like "Hoe could you have a world cup with Ronaldo". Can you see/understand how obvious the corruption is? MONEY MONEY MONEY. But this whole incident is too obvious and blatant to be ignored.

On the topic the goal last night, for you yanks who don't have a full understanging of Soccer (much like I don't habe a full understanding of American football) Before Henry handled the ball MULTIPLE times there were two French players offside, this was also missed by the officials, there was a comedy errors, the likes of which you wouldn't even see happen on an episode of Fawlty Towers. Before the ball had even gone in the Irish players had reacted, this should have alerted the officials even if they did miss it.

For those RETARDS who qouted the statistics from the match, you obviously didn't see the match itself. Ireland were far superior. Just becsuse a team has a lot of pointless possession of the ball doesn't mean they were better, they did nothing with it, BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T ALLOWED TO BY A BETTER TEAM............

Sorry for the rant but I hoope this clarifies the situation for those of you who don't quite understand all the fuss.

QUESTIONS??...

Jamboleya wrote:

For those RETARDS who qouted the statistics from the match, you obviously didn't see the match itself. Ireland were far superior. Just becsuse a team has a lot of pointless possession of the ball doesn't mean they were better, they did nothing with it, BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T ALLOWED TO BY A BETTER TEAM............

Too true. France may have had the ball more, but they had about squat for real chances on goal. Ireland had several. Hugo Lloris the French goalie had to pull the roosters' asses out of the fire quite a few times (and good on him for that I guess, he had a good game, unlike the rest of the French bastards.)

Okay enough, now. Let me spell it out for ya. I know soccer. I've been playing soccer since junior high, and I watched the game.

There is NO conspiracy.

France is a FAR better team and WON.

The French were NOT offside.

The French were robbed of at least one PENALTY.

Statistics do NOT lie. France was BETTER.

The Irish players are NO saints.

QUESTIONS??...

American Soccer wrote:

Okay enough, now. Let me spell it out for ya. I know soccer. I've been playing soccer since junior high, and I watched the game.

There is NO conspiracy.

France is a FAR better team and WON.

The French were NOT offside.

The French were robbed of at least one PENALTY.

Statistics do NOT lie. France was BETTER.

The Irish players are NO saints.

QUESTIONS??...

American Soccer, you're clearly looking for a reaction out of me. Nothing is really being said of a conspiracy but the re-jigging of the playoff criteria was hardly fair, even an individual who was uneducated in the rules of Soccer would call this into question.

On paper the French team have the better players but you must understand that this is a team sport which isn't decided by the comnbined wages of its individual players. Yes France won the WC in '98(11yrs + ago) and were finalist in the last WC BUT Ireland, when all things are considered are also a very respectable team who have always performed better than expected when they qualified for WC's. They didn't deserve to go out that way.

Look again, two players were clearly offside, it wasn't even a 50/50 call, they were 100% offside.

The call not to give the penalty was the right call, it was a dive that could have easily fooled the ref, much like it has fooled you (go figure). The actually had a flawless game other than the handball, shame really.

I'm not going to reply about the stats, I already have.

No the Irish players aren't saints, no pro football players are, diving and little bits of cheating will always be a part of the game, however, this incident it too blatent to be ignored.

If you really did see the game, you have no grasp on the ins and outs of soccer, sorry.

As an American who loves soccer and has grown up playing my entire life, for more than just pick up games, I do feel I have a fairly safe understanding of the game.

I agree with you on all points you've made, the re-working of the playoff format, etc is certainly not a fair way to go about things.

I want to make sure you understand that I wholeheartedly (and I think anybody knowledgeable of soccer feels the same way I do) feel sympathy for what has happened to the Irish squad. I don't have a fire either way as the US was able to meander its way through the relatively easy path it has to the WC. I mention this because you have to understand most American's views of qualifying for the WC - it should be a cakewalk. Not many quite understand the difficulty it is to escape the European qualifiers with the talent that each country is able to put out. So many might say "just win the games and you're in", which is OK for the US, but not for a European team.

Now onto Henry and the penalty - you are right about the offsides, but I have seen worse get through. It was obvious from the replay, and quite possibly live, but as was pointed out just moments later, refs aren't perfect. Again, I feel sympathy for the Irish side - it is never easy to swallow a loss you shouldn't have - but to vilify Henry as some have is just outright unacceptable. It was an obvious penalty and should have been called, but players commit these obvious penalties all over the field, most of the time caught and sometimes not - do you expect them to approach the referee at that point? No, so neither should have Henry.

Simply put, I would not be outraged with a replay and I would not be outraged if the referees were reprimanded. But for Henry to be disciplined in any fashion is uncalled for. He made a play for the ball (illegally) and got away with it. Because of the nature and importance of the play it comes across as he got away with murder, but it is the same crime that many times throughout a game people get away with.