Henry's Call for Replay is Hollow Gesture

The Times is reporting this afternoon that Thierry Henry has called upon Fifa to order a replay of France's World Cup play-off second leg with Ireland.

Henry appears to be attempting to rebuild his reputation that has been left in tatters following his extra-time handball on Wednesday night , but my feeling is that the statement he has made is nothing more than that. Henry doesn't believe Fifa will order a replay. In fact, he's waited until Fifa have actually ruled out the possibility of a replay before making this statememt. To me it seems like a calculated gesture designed to repair significant damage to the reputation of a player who has been obsessed with self-image for the whole of his career.

I'd really rather Henry stayed out of our faces for the foreseeable future, as the only way he is really going to recover from this is by doing his talking on the pitch by balancing his exhilirating style of play with a hefty measure of honesty and integrity. It might be harder than trying to talk his way out of it, but it's the only way back now.

Did UEFA and FIFA miss something?

Take a look at uefa.com, find the match report from last night's game between France and Ireland, take a read, anything seem strange?

Here is how UEFA reported William Gallas' goal:

And so came extra time where in the eighth minute a hopeful France free-kick found its way to Henry, who squared for Gallas to head the goal that takes his country to South Africa.

Hmmmm.......

Well that surely must have been an oversight, surely FIFA - the world governing body wouldn't have missed the same thing would they?

Les Bleus came into the contest after the break but remained vulnerable to Irish attacks, meaning the tie had to be resolved in extra time, when William Gallas equalised to send his team through to their fourth consecutive finals.

Interesting......

What are we to make of this? Regardless of intent or the characters involved what occurred last night was an injustice, and a significant one at that. The World Cup is the self-proclaimed biggest show on earth and for any player probably the pinnacle of their career. To deny a nation the opportunity to compete because of this kind of error is nothing short of a travesty.

The response of FIFA and UEFA? Apparently it never happened. Presumably they hope that everyone on the planet gets their football news through uefa.com and fifa.com and they are looking for complete ignorance of the issue?

So will FIFA or UEFA make a statement about this? Will they do ANYTHING? Well when your leader is Sepp Blatter, reality is not often something that you have to deal with, so I am going to stick my neck out here and say.....no.

Nowhere to hide for cheat Henry

Tonight witnessed one of the great footballing injustices as Thierry Henry's blatant double-handball in Paris gave France an aggregate World Cup play-off victory against Ireland.

Let me set my stall out from the off: there is no situation where cheating in order to gain advantage for your team is acceptable. Doubtless there will be those who, while not condoning Henry's actions, will accept it as part of the game. However, the notion that he did what he did because he had to, and any of us would have done the same is a total fallacy.

There is no excuse for Henry's actions. Some may say that it was an instinctive action, that his arm automatically stretched out to keep the ball in play and as such he is not responsible for those actions. Let me dispel this myth. Handling in order to keep the ball in play is not an instinctive reaction for a footballer. If it was, we'd see it week in, week out in domestic football, but we simply don't. Henry's actions may have played out in a split second, but as a footballer you need less than that time to decide to do something, and Henry clearly made a decision tonight.

Of course this incident will also raise familiar discussions surrounding officials and video replays. That however, is a debate for another day. Tonight there is nothing but a sense of pure injustice on behalf of the Irish who fought so hard and so well, and deserved so much more than to be eliminated by the actions of a cheat.