Zeus writes:

How can you leave out the Frog handball incident in the only soccer blog that I read?

I’d completely forgotten about it, to tell you the truth. The main de grenouille incident (”hand of frog”) has been well-documented. This video clearly shows Thierry Henry double-handballing the ball in the crucial play-off game between France and Ireland; the first hand ball seems like an involuntary reaction any player of the game will recognize, but the second one is quite deliberate as he uses his hand to keep the ball in play before squaring it to Gallas for the winner. Clearly cheating and the correct decision would have been to disallow the goal and give a yellow to Henry for deliberate hand ball. Not to mention two French players were offsides when the free kick was taken as well…

On the podcasts I listen to the topic has been beaten to a pulp and frankly there are some lunatic opinions out there. Here are my calm, rational, and utterly irrefutable opinions on the matter:

* As an avid Ars*nal hater, I am no fan of Henry. I do not view his as the immaculate sportsman others do, but I don’t think he deserves the vilification he’s been getting in the press. In that situation, I think plenty of players would have done the same thing. It’s happening so fast I find it hard to criticize.

*However, I think Henry’s true(r) colors happen in the aftermath. Henry claims to have told the referee it was a handball and thinks a replay is the fairest solution. This feels utterly disingenuous. First, off “telling the referee” would look something other than wheeling away in celebration, wouldn’t it? If Henry did tell the referee, it wasn’t until much later. He could have, for example, shook his head, pushed his teammates away and made it very clear it was a handball. And suggesting a replay is the fairest solution after the fact is ridiculous. There was no chance of it happening, so Henry has nothing to lose by suggesting it to look like a good guy?

* FIFA are fighting a losing battle against technology being brought in because the public clamor is too great and the solution is too easy. Their problem, however, is that it complicates influencing games. As fans of Italy and Spain know, something wasn’t quite right about South Korea’s march to the semifinals of the 2002 World Cup. That something would be multiple blown offsides calls against Italy and disallowing two perfectly good goals for Spain, errors that are inexplicable and easily corrected via video replay, just like the handball against Ireland. Unfortunately for FIFA, there was a strong suspicion that they wanted France in the World Cup (bigger stars, bigger television market) and wanted one of the host nations (Korea/Japan) to go deep in the tournament to show how far the sport has come in Asia. Even if it isn’t completely fixed, it seems awfully convenient that referees make crucial mistakes in games that turn out exactly how FIFA had hoped.

* The ol’ “it all pans out over the long haul” excuse as well as “Ireland benefited from bad calls earlier in the campaign” are absolutely ridiculous. This was in extra time in a World Cup playoff. There is no evening out, just like you never get another chance when you’re screwed in the knock-out stages of the World Cup. It also seems like an odd argument, that nothing should be done about hideously wrong referee decisions.

* I do like the fact that football rules are slow to change, and changes tend to improve the quality of the game. When draws and conservative play were killing the game, FIFA passed a number of rule changes (3 points for a win rather than 2, liberalizing offsides rules to benefit attackers, ‘keepers can’t use hands on backpasses) that sped up the game and awarded attacking play. The current problem is that one middle-aged referee and three assistants can’t keep up with the modern athlete. The run of play and the speed and trajectory of the ball is ridiculously fast, too fast for the human eye to follow with any degree of accuracy and certainty.

* A couple simple rules would fix most of the problems. An official watches the game with the benefit of twenty-two different camera angles. If there’s a controversial moment in the penalty area relating to fouls, handballs, or offsides, this official has, say, 30 seconds to overrule the call on the field. If the 30 seconds passes because it’s too close to call, the call on the field stands. Substitutions and injuries take at least this amount of time, so the critics who say it would destroy the flow of the game don’t seem to have a leg to stand on. Also, I think dives and violent play should be reviewable after the game and penalties assessed accordingly.

It seems pretty easy and straightforward. Which is why nothing will happen anytime soon.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

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