Off with his hand or Le Hand of GodFollow

I was just reading some comments on the web site of the french journal l'equipe and what I can tell you is that even the french are disgusted by what happened. They want Raymond Domenech's head and a lengthy ban for Henry. Some are even hoping that they get kicked out of the world cup in the first round.


Edit to add: I think the worst in all this is the cover-up from FIFA and the UEFA. If you read the match summary on their web sites, they don't even mention the hand. They just talk of a miraculous goal from Gallas.

Edited, Nov 19th 2009 7:47pm by feelz

Thanks the plug ****-waffle.



Edited, Nov 19th 2009 7:15pm by baelnic

Nope, that was his last ever act as footballer

As for the Henry incident, the French reaction has been surprisingly vehement in its condemnation of what happened. Most French supporter, myself included, are feeling rather ashamed of it. It's cheating, it's not a good example to set for kids, and it's out of character for Henry, who remains one of my all-time footballistic hero.

Having said that, some of the English/Irish reactions were well over the top. He didn't rape or murder anyone, he simply did a handball that the refs missed. It's not worse than a dive, which happen all the time. So you have to keep a sense of proportion. Even if he hadn't done that, it was still a draw. Ireland was not sure to go through by any means.

I think the whole hoopla reflects a deeper malaise, both within French football, and football in general. Within French football, it's simple: we hate Domenech, our national coach. He's an incompetent **** who should've been sacked years ago. The team therefore plays horribly, and we have guys like Benzema stuck on the bench. Had we not qualified for the WC, Domenech would've gotten sacked, and we would all have been quite happy for it.

As for football in general, the whole play-off thing was slightly fixed. FIFA introduced seedings at the last minute to make sure France, Russia, and Portugal had the best chances of qualifying. People were upset about that, and rightly so. And then this happens, when pretty much all the neutrals were rooting for Ireland...

As for the refereeing, FIFA are once again being retarded. Video technology must be introduced. It's archaic to think referees can do the job properly. I could write a whole essay about it, but I won't cos no one would read it, but there's 0 doubt that the time is right. Everything FIFA is doing (introducing more refs, more linesmen, etc...) just makes the problem worse. The solution is there, and is pretty simple.

If anything good should come out of this game, hopefully it'll be the eventual introduction of video technology for certain refereeing decisions.

As for France, we'll probably do **** at the WC. But so would've the Irish, so let's not get too upset about it either.

In terms of players, on paper, I think we're as good as anyone. Henry, Anelka, Benzema up front is as good as you're gonna finda anywhere. Add Ribery and Gourcuff, guys like Diarra and toulalan, and Lloris our keeper, and it's a really solid team. The only real problem is the manager: He falls out with players, he has **** rules, he's weak and not respected, he believes in astrology and therefore wont play 2 scorpios in the same team lest they "kill" each other... And the man left benzema, who was bought for $50M this summer by Real Madrid, on the bench. So yeah, it's always gonna be an uphill struggle...

The only reason he's still in charge is because we went to the 2006 WC final with him. And we only lost on penalties, after the Zidane headbutt, so he wasn't very far from away from getting France its second WC ever. So eventhough we got the final despite having Domenech, it's still given him tons of credit. Which, by now, is all expired. Unless he wins the WC in 2010, he'll be gone by the 14th July.

I enjoyed watching the US during the Confederation Cup. They're super dirty, but they can also play some good football. I think a Secound Round/Quarter Final is achievable in South Africa for them. By the way, whatever happened to Freddy Adu? Wasn't he supposed to be the next Pele?

Some men decided to kick a football and agreed not to touch it with their hands.

Some other men paid lots of money to watch.

One of the men touched the ball with his hand.

That's pretty much all I get here.

It is odd really, tennis for instance has used the eagle eye technology for some time now, they can do instant replays and correct the decisions if necessary, but for some reason football has not done this, despite so many calling out for it for so many years now.

As for France cheating their way in the WC, good for them! Belgium can't even manage that anymore.

The key word. It's a grueling sport.

In American football, only part of the team has to be able to run/throw well, the rest just need to be tanks. In basketball, you trot back and forth, and the Ents they get to play that game can cover the distance in 3.5 steps. In baseball, you had Babe Ruth.

Right, like that doesn't happen in basketball, usually from the highest-paid players.

Basketball isn't a sport, it's an acting career.

They also use video technology in rubgy, and it works extremely well. They have a "video referee" who calls out contentious decisions, or incidents that the ref might've missed, like someone punching someone else far from the action.

The question is not "should football adopt video technology", it's "how much video technology should football use"? There's no much debate about things like the ball crossing the line, or violent conduct, or clear handballs. It gets a bit trickier for fouls, penalties, and offsides. I personally think they should do it for offsides as well, but that's a whole other debate.

Finally football is called "soccer" in some countries because Oxford University used to call football "Association Football", to differentiate it from rugby which was called "Rugby Football". Oxford students then shortened "Association" to "soccer", like they shortened rubgy to "ruggers", or breakfast to "brekkers", and it stuck. In some countries at least.

That was today's bit-sized sports history lesson, kids.

US draws England, Algeria, and Slovenia. France gets bailed out by the ping pong balls by drawing South Africa, Mexico, and Uruguay. I bet there will be more Irish tears today.

I think two Concacaf teams are going to the second round.