Henry hands FIFA golden opportunity to send message to cheats

“We’re going to the World Cup but we go to the locker-room with our heads bowed.  It was not something to be proud of.  I’m not going to party.”  Those the words of former France left-back Bixente Lizarazu, a winner of the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000.

There is a point of view, charitable to Thierry Henry, that his handball was instinctive, that any player would have done it in that situation. This is easily disproven. No sane person can watch the video replay and conclude that Henry’s handball was anything other than a deliberate, cynical act. In fact, I am assured that the handball was so bad it would have been illegal in basketball.

Besides, Henry has form when it comes to cheating.  Against Rangers in the UEFA Champions League in 2007, he scored the opening goal of a 2-0 win for Barcelona in the Camp Nou with his hand.  Spain were knocked out of the last World Cup by a Patrick Vieira header from a free-kick which should never have been given, Henry going down clutching his face after the faintest of contacts with Carles Puyol. He dived for a penalty against Chelsea in the FA Cup in 2003, which was mercifully saved by Carlo Cudicini.  This dive against Wigan Athletic invites ridicule.

I’m writing this while listening to David Ginola on the radio, saying how the French nation are embarrassed by the manner of their qualification.  But the handball should not be the main source of embarrassment.  That should be the fact that France played so terribly that Henry felt he had no choice but to impersonate a volleyball player in setting up William Gallas’s goal.

Sportsmen rarely cheat when they are winning.  It is not necessary.  But France were collectively haunted last night by memories of 1993, when they threw away home leads in their last two qualifying matches for USA ‘94, against Israel and Bulgaria, at the cost of qualification.  Here they were again, with qualification within easy reach, ballsing it up in Paris.  Desperation struck.  Ireland may blame Emil Kostadinov for their elimination.

We may add hypocrisy to Henry’s charge sheet. Not just for his preposterous claim after the match that he did not mean to handle the ball but because he has railed against cheating in the past. Who can forget his outburst at the conduct of Barcelona’s back four – including, ironically, Puyol – after the 2006 Champions League Final? Or how he spat feathers after the 2001 FA Cup Final when his shot was handled on the goal-line by Stéphane Henchoz, the Liverpool defender?

Henry, though, is not the only hypocrite. FIFA continue to say one thing but do another when it comes to combatting cheating. The FIFA Fair Play Code begins thus: “Play fair. Winning is without value if victory has been achieved unfairly or dishonestly. Cheating is easy, but brings no pleasure. Playing fair requires courage and character. It is also more satisfying. Fair play always has its reward, even when the game is lost. Playing fair earns respect, while cheating only brings shame. Remember: it is only a game. And games are pointless unless played fairly.” Yet they continually permit players to get away with flagrant acts of foul play.

The Henry handball is a perfect opportunity to FIFA not just to prove that they mean business (and that the big names in football are not playing by different rules to those on a mortal plane) but to provide a huge deterrent to any player in a position to cheat in future. The stakes in a World Cup play-off are simply too high and this incident too blatant to do nothing.

Banning Henry would be the easy part. Not even the player himself could argue against banning him from the early stages of the World Cup. But France would still be there and that would offend justice. The participation of Les Bleus in South Africa would render hollow any notion that crime doesn’t pay.

Quite simply, the result must not stand. France beat Ireland 1-0; Ireland beat France 1-0. So far, so equal. Replaying the second leg at the Stade de France would hardly be fair on Ireland as it would render last night’s superb 90-minute victory meaningless.

A one-off tie-break, Algeria-Egypt style, must be ordered, on neutral territory; Wembley stadium would be ideal, or the Camp Nou. (But let’s face it, Wembley could do with the cash.) This, on its own, would be adequate punishment for Henry; not only would he have to do it all over again but his team-mates would regard him as the man who put their place in the finals at risk. Only then could we be said to have a just outcome and if the results are not just, sport has no meaning.

Too many people in football are prepared to bottle it when it comes to punishing cheats. Let’s deal with the myth, recycled last night by Sky Sports pundit Ronnie Whelan, that any player would have cheated with a place at the World Cup at stake given the opportunity.

The problem with this notion is, they didn’t. Robbie Keane did not take a dive when rounding Hugo Lloris in the France penalty area in the second half. John O’Shea did not try to control Liam Lawrence’s free-kick shortly after the break with his hand. On no other occasion did any Irish player – or, indeed, any other French player – attempt to bundle home a set-piece with their hand. I am struggling to think of any occasion in which Ireland have cheated an opponent out of a result in recent years.

It is also a cop-out to blame the referee; he is not superhuman. Cheating will never be stamped out while FIFA merely rely on officials spotting it for what it is in real time. Only retrospective justice, using video evidence, will work. UEFA’s clumsy and unnecessary back-tracking over the ban for Eduardo following his dive in the Arsenal-Celtic play-off has further muddied the waters, thanks to the ludicrous wording of the ’simulation’ rule, which illogically states that no dive has taken place if there is any contact at all between players.

We may criticise the linesman on two counts: he was in a much better position than the referee to spot Henry’s handball; and he did not flag for offside against Sébastien Squillaci, who attempted to get his head to Florent Malouda’s free-kick.

Sport continues to have a skewed view of cheating. Take performance-enhancing drugs and you will, rightly, be stigmatized for the rest of your career, should you be fortunate enough still to have one. Cheat in another way: dive, handle the ball, put a ball into a scrum at an angle and, providing the referee does not have the vision of an eagle, you will get away with it.

As for Ireland, it is yet more play-off heartbreak, following an outstanding performance. Holland, Belgium and Turkey have already denied them places at major tournaments at the final hurdle. Giovanni Trapattoni has, yet again, suffered an outrageous World Cup injustice, following Italy’s disallowed ‘golden goal’ against South Korea in 2002, which came as it did after myriad other dreadful decisions had gone against the side and Francesco Totti had been wrongly sent off after a dive which simply did not happen.

For France, next year’s World Cup will be a hollow experience. It is not fanciful to imagine Henry being roundly booed in South Africa, just as Cristiano Ronaldo was roundly booed in the 2006 semi-final following several unsporting acts in Portugal’s earlier games. Indeed, the team might as well be renamed France*. But if FIFA are to protect the integrity of the game, France must be forced to replay. There is precedent; Uzbekistan v Bahrain, in the last World Cup cycle, was replayed following a technical refereeing error. If cheating is not a better reason to render a result null and void than a refereeing error, then football has become perverse.