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

I'm happy France is in. I hope they win it all.

It's a shame good teams like Ireland and Russia are out when you see all the dross qualifying from CONCACAF, Asia and Oceania.

Henry is cheating scumbag!

+1

General Zaroff wrote:

I'm happy France is in. I hope they win it all.

Wish France could have scored another goal and won fair and square though.

I also wish they could have won in a better way. What Henry did was an instinctive reaction. Irish players would have done the same thing. Ireland had a few calls for hand balls during the game and the players acted like they did nothing wrong. None of them resulted in anything like that though. It is Ireland's fault that France were in the position to do that.

When you have played as much soccer as these guys (lived it every day all day....) touching the ball with your hands is not instinctive it is deliberate.

Clear and intentional, the Refs completely blew it.

Ireland were robbed by the cheating Henry.....once every 4 years and for it to be taken away like that. The refs have a job to do..hand ball in the penalty box which resulted in a goal. I hope the French get killed in the first round in SA....

France advances on more away goals? Hate that rule.

wejosquad wrote:

France advances on more away goals? Hate that rule.

Actually, no... they advance because the score is 2-1 aggregate.

Slovenia advanced over Russia on away goals. Good rule, by the way.

france should decline the berth

henry should be suspended for the first round of the world cup

blatant beyond belief

the fix was in and france knew they could get away with murder, so they did

ireland will extract payback, just not on the pitch

Yea that wasn't an "oops it hit my hand moment" it was a "hey I can keep this ball in with my hand and oh look we scored" moment. Blatant.

Whilst we can all agree it was a handball - you could make an argument that france should have had a penalty a few minutes before. Also - in Saturday's game Evra touched the ball past Given - Given dived at his feet and missed the ball. If Evra had not made such a meal of that one he could have had a penalty as well.

All this talk of conspiracy is nonsense. It was not FIFA that made Robbie Keane miss a sitter.

Bring on TV replays. And none of this each team gets one challenge. The 4th official should be able to use it as much times as necessary.

that was not evra it was Nic Anelka. Anelka was falling before Given touched him. So no penalty was given

Ireland had several chances to wrap it up just like france had another chance on goal.

Henry should be embarrassed, and banned from several WC group games

Speaking of running, Charlie Spedding has a brief section in "From Last To First" in which he speculates that Diego Maradona's troubles stem from his not fessing up to his handball against England, i.e., it exposed a major character flaw.

Americans talking about football is always pretty funny.

It's up to the officials to make the decision. What's going to happen next? Players sending themselves off? Henry sat down with Dunne on the pitch and admitted that he handled it, and Dunne said the same to him: 'You're not the Ref, it's not your call.'

Anyone not aghast and outraged at Henry's action is out of their mind. I've never seen such a brazen hand-ball - to cup the ball with a hand and steer it towards the feet, directly in front of the goal?!! And now Henry's story has changed numerous times already..."the ball hit my hand", "ok, my hand hit the ball"..."but I told the ref" - really? Was this during your celebration run down the pitch?

This is scandalous. At the least, France and Ireland should replay extra time.

Henry palmed the ball like an NBA point guard.

Really?!?

actually wrote:

Whilst we can all agree it was a handball - you could make an argument that france should have had a penalty a few minutes before. Also - in Saturday's game Evra touched the ball past Given - Given dived at his feet and missed the ball. If Evra had not made such a meal of that one he could have had a penalty as well.

All this talk of conspiracy is nonsense. It was not FIFA that made Robbie Keane miss a sitter.

Bring on TV replays. And none of this each team gets one challenge. The 4th official should be able to use it as much times as necessary.

The fact that FIFA just decided a few weeks before the end of the campaign to introduce seedings for the playoffs when the big teams like France and Germany and Portugal and Russia were struggling? The f***tard that is Sepp Blatter realised that losing France for the world cup would equal a loss in revenue for FIFA, through TV rights in France, jerseys, etc...

Platini and Blatter must be rubbing their hands right now, as their referee (and Henry) literally handed the French the victory.

Robbie Keane said a similar thing to BBC yesterday

Here's an extract:

"They are all probably clapping hands, [UEFA President Michel] Platini sitting up there on the phone to [FIFA President] Sepp Blatter, probably texting each other, delighted with the result.

"France and Germany had a chance of being in the play-offs as well, two massive countries.

"There was no way in a million years it was going to be a fair draw - and it wasn't."

To end this rant with a joke

How many Frenchmen does it take to change a light bulb?

..............One. He holds the bulb and all of Europe revolves around him.