Charlie_B
Harvester
Surprised no-one's mentioned this yet.
For anyone with their head in the sand/not interested in football: Ireland played France on Wednesday in a play-off to see who would qualify for the World Cup. Deep into extra time, with the scores level, a cross comes in which Thierry Henry controls with his hand - twice - before setting up William Gallas to score the goal which sent France through. The Irish are livid, the French give a collective Gallic shrug and run off to celebrate.
So, what do people think? Having watched it a few times, I think things happened too quickly to blame Henry for handling the ball - it was an instinctive reaction. That said, it was also clearly against the rules and the goal should never have stood. It'd have been great if he'd turned around and held his hands up (so to speak), but the truth is 99.9% of footballers would keep quiet, and I think even most fans would rather win a game in that way than lose it.
P.S. One leading French newspaper (I forget which) went with the headline "France finally qualify for World Cup after hold-up", which made me laugh.
For anyone with their head in the sand/not interested in football: Ireland played France on Wednesday in a play-off to see who would qualify for the World Cup. Deep into extra time, with the scores level, a cross comes in which Thierry Henry controls with his hand - twice - before setting up William Gallas to score the goal which sent France through. The Irish are livid, the French give a collective Gallic shrug and run off to celebrate.
So, what do people think? Having watched it a few times, I think things happened too quickly to blame Henry for handling the ball - it was an instinctive reaction. That said, it was also clearly against the rules and the goal should never have stood. It'd have been great if he'd turned around and held his hands up (so to speak), but the truth is 99.9% of footballers would keep quiet, and I think even most fans would rather win a game in that way than lose it.
P.S. One leading French newspaper (I forget which) went with the headline "France finally qualify for World Cup after hold-up", which made me laugh.