After last night’s scenes in Paris, it got me thinking back to ‘that’ event when Freddie Sears scored against City and the goal that never was. Last night, to anyone who missed it (which unless you went on a vacation to Mars you won’t have), Thierry Henry blatantly handled the ball before crossing for Gallas to score the goal that sent France to the World Cup in a Play-Off against Ireland.
It is quite clear to me that the blame should not be attributed to the referee, the referee’s assistant or even Henry himself – the blame lies squarely at the door of FIFA. FIFA have consistently refused to introduce video technology and have failed to do anything about cheating in the modern game. The world governing body of football are an abberation to the beautiful game. Henry did what any professional footballer would do and tried to gain an advantage in order to help his team without getting away with it; which footballers do every time they step on to the pitch. For as long as players can help their team and get away with cheating, they will. Every fan, player, manager and journalist knows that this is the case.
Some have been saying that the responsibility of the decision to give the goal was with Henry and that he should have told the referee that he handled it, which is of course absurd. It is not a player’s responsibility to tell the referee if there has or has not been a foul in the build-up to a goal; it is the referee’s to spot it. But last night, the referee clearly could not see what had happened and was therefore left with no choice but to award the goal.
In this circumstance, as with the events at Ashton Gate in the infamous game against Palace, the referee was clearly out of his depth and out of control, and this is the exact situation where we have to do the right thing and give the referees the support they desperately need. The decision to allow that goal last night has huge consequences. It means that Ireland were knocked out by a goal that under the laws of the game should not have stood. Due to a blatant illegality, Gallas scored what turned out to be the winning goal and thus give his side an unjust passage to the World Cup Finals in 2010.
But last night was not the referee’s fault; he simply did not see the incident. And in a situation like this, as with Palace, there simply must be video support for the referees. If each team were given one challenge per game of a key decision – perhaps only for goal-line controversy or an infringement in the build-up to a goal – then there would have been a system in place for Ireland (and Palace) to appeal to the video referee to award what would have undoubtedly been the right decision.
The consequences of football continuing to ignore calls for video replays simply make our most important pastime a laughing stock. In tennis, cricket, rugby and countless other international sports, video technology has positively contributed to the evolution and advancement of the respective games. Whilst I accept that decisions in football are often not as clear cut – for example one pundit can think that a foul whilst another could completely disagree – the game simply has to change in order to adapt itself to the 21st century. Giving teams one challenge each would mean that you would not have constant breaks in the game and they would also have to choose carefully as to whether or not to appeal. Cheating could be clamped down upon, as could diving. This, in my view, is an absolute must after the ludicrousness of last night.
If football continues to allow an advantage to be gained by cheating, we cannot blame the players. We all know that winning is the most important factor in football and if they can deceive a referee they will. Players also know that the consequences of cheating are small – getting a yellow card for a dive is not enough of a disincentive to trying to gain a penalty for example, so players such as David N’Gog will continue to cheat to try and win penalties. There also therefore needs to be harsher retrospective punishment for cheating in order to redress the balance and reduce its regularity.
Working within education, you come to realise that footballers are not just people who kick a ball around. They are the celebrated heroes of our generation. They are the role models of our children and whilst footballers did not choose to be so important, they are. Allowing Henry’s cheating to go unpunished, which will almost certainly happen, sends out an awful message to children and society. It tells us that if you cheat, but get away with it, you will gain an advantage and get no punishment. FIFA and the football world’s governing bodies simply must do there utmost to take cheating out of the game of football. It is becoming an embarrassment to the beautiful game, and the sport has now reached a crossroads, and the consequences of not adapting and admitting that something must be done to stop this could be something from which the sport of football may never recover. |
