Liam Brady last night branded Thierry Henry “shameful“ after launching a bitter attack on FIFA for fixing the outcome.
Or did he? In fact LB7’s use of the word “shameful” was aimed at FIFA. On Thierry he said:
I wouldn’t blame Thierry Henry for what went on. I would maybe look at what happened three months before and the fact that these seedings for the play-offs were made to favour the bigger teams. I would ask why that went on.
Then we have Henry Winter in the Telegraph calling for Henry to be banned from the World Cup, saying:
Thierry, you have just given football its “Say it ain’t so, Joe” moment. From Shoeless to Shameless.
If the reference eludes you Winter is talking about “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, a baseball player for the Chicago White Sox who participated in a match fixing conspiracy to allow the Cincinnati Reds to win the World Series. So Thierry’s handball is now being equated with deliberate, considered and systematic cheating. I really expected better from Henry Winter because this is the kind of shite you would see in the worst kind of tabloid. Instead he’s jumped on the bandwagon and made himself look like a total idiot. He goes on to say:
A cheat like Henry should not be allowed to attend the World Cup while honest souls like Shay Given, Robbie Keane, Damien Duff and Ireland’s wonderful supporters stay at home.
Since when did an English journalist care so much about Irish football? It’s cloying in the extreme to have them fake sincerity towards Ireland just to have a pop at Henry. How nice of them to be so outraged on our behalf. And ‘honest souls’ like Robbie Keane and Damien Duff. After the game Damien Duff spoke to the BBC, here’s what he said:
If it was myself or Robbie down the other end we’d have tried it … you just expect the linesman or referee to see it.
Honest souls, indeed. I haven’t even bothered looking anywhere else because I assume it’s all the same shite, not a voice of reason anywhere (although Barry Glendenning did say he’d buy Henry a pint if he came to Ireland – he’d probably buy him a pint of Coors Lite though, which would be fair punishment it has to be said).
It really is amazing when you see the unbridled vitriol over this incident … IN ENGLAND. Opportunistic press capitalizing on the latent xenophobia of some who wish to think British Football as pure as days gone by and attribute stylistic and cultural differences in how the game is played on an alleged continentalization that’s out to ruin the game.
Sounds eerily similar to the plight of the Fox News/Republican Tea Partiers here in America … make that “Real America” – you know – the part not including New York, LA, etc.
It’s very convenient to blame Henry only because of the stakes of the game and the nationality of the victims in this case. I still wonder why the outrage isn’t vented at the governing body who is STILL the lone holdout in major world sport in integrating some sort of real, effective, efficient technological (or human) review process either during the game or after the game.
All we hear are excuses of why and how and precedent. If you keep hemming and hawing, nothing will ever get done. Draw a line and move forward with a plan. But if you don’t address the real causes, this will happen again. and again. And there’s nothing that making Thierry Henry a scapegoat will ever do to fix it. He is not the droid you’re looking for.
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Perhaps SAF and the others who are upset at the quality of English football would do well to look at the quality of their current head coach. Instead of looking at some of the players coming off injuries or otherwise playing in England like Lampard, Wright Phillips and Hargraves, he decided to fly to LA to check out David Beckham practicing with the Galaxy and playing in a charity game against Hollywood United – a team made up of, among other wannabe athletes, Drew Carey and a guy from Def Leppard. 
