There Is No Place for Cheating In Football

Fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion to allow France’s goal to stand as Thierry Henry clearly han­dled the ball prior to assist­ing William Gal­las, it is only nor­mal to have increased com­plaints and ever grow­ing dis­plea­sure at the level of ref­er­ee­ing. Some may attribute this to a con­spir­acy which neces­si­tates the pres­ence of France in South Africa 2010 at the expense of the Irish.

Oth­ers will point to the hotly con­tested Egypt ver­sus Alge­ria play-off match which took place in Sudan (Egypt’s pre­ferred loca­tion) and not Tunisia (loca­tion cho­sen by the Alge­ri­ans) after con­tro­ver­sial pre-match inci­dents when the two sides met in Cairo over the week­end. Algeria’s bus was sub­jected to rough treat­ment to say the least and under other cir­cum­stances the match would have been post­poned or Egypt would have been forced to for­feit the match if proof of injury was given. In either case, the match went on and the Egyp­tians, with some claim­ing they were favoured by FIFA, suc­ceeded in get­ting the nec­es­sary 2–0 win to force a play-off match. Obvi­ously, the match in Sudan ended in Algeria’s favour to dis­pel any claims that FIFA was going to have the Egyp­tians in next summer’s World Cup.

Going back to the impor­tant point about key ref­er­ee­ing deci­sions, the error made yes­ter­day was obvi­ous since Henry bla­tantly han­dled the ball and it is hard to believe the lines­man could not spot that infringe­ment. How­ever, if one is to look at this Youtube.com clip fea­tur­ing some unac­cept­able and appalling behav­iour from a female ath­lete dur­ing a col­lege soc­cer game in the United States, it is unbe­liev­able how she man­aged not to get sent-off on at least five of those vio­lent occa­sions. It is incon­ceiv­able to think that a ref­eree, at any level, can­not notice such abuse inflicted by this sup­posed sports­woman on the opponent’s players.

In addi­tion, how far has foot­ball and sports in gen­eral dete­ri­o­rated and taken a step back at the expense of achiev­ing suc­cess on the pitch, sat­is­fy­ing hun­gry spon­sors or feed­ing the deeper pock­ets? Even at the ama­teur level where sports­man­ship should be engraved and high­lighted, this case, despite being quite unique with this par­tic­u­lar female player endan­ger­ing the career and well-being of her oppo­nents, shows that some would go quite far to achieve suc­cess and/or their objec­tive at any expense.

No one is com­par­ing Henry to this female because he does not have the rep­u­ta­tion of a dirty player but what hap­pened against Ire­land may have earned him the rep­u­ta­tion of a cheat. Ear­lier this sea­son there were dif­fer­ent inci­dents involv­ing two Pre­mier League play­ers though the cir­cum­stances were quite dif­fer­ent. In one case, Emmanuel Ade­bayor was involved in two ugly and con­tro­ver­sial inci­dents in the clash against his for­mer team Arse­nal. Ade­bayor ran the length of the pitch to cel­e­brate in front of the Arse­nal fans after scor­ing for Man­ches­ter City and he also stamped on Robin van Persie’s head. Indeed, foot­ball has become a highly charged pro­fes­sion but what excuses Adebayor’s unac­cept­able behav­iour as a pro­fes­sional who gets paid ridicu­lous sums to per­form for the public?

In the sec­ond sit­u­a­tion, Arsenal’s Croa­t­ian player Eduardo da Silva was accused of sim­u­la­tion in the Cham­pi­ons League when he won a penalty against Celtic. Since that inci­dent, doubts have sur­faced when­ever Eduardo fell in the penalty area. There is no guar­an­tee that play­ers from oppos­ing sides will begin to feel sus­pi­cious when­ever Henry takes a dive or does some­thing they deem inap­pro­pri­ate. Henry may have helped France qual­ify but he did dam­age his rep­u­ta­tion along the way.

Have a look at the clip and decide for your­self! Some­times deci­sions are really down to mis­takes done by ref­er­ees in a split-second but this goes beyond any com­pre­hen­sion of the basic rules of officiating.

Tagged as: Algeria, Egypt, FIFA, France, Republic of Ireland, South Africa 2010, Thierry Henry, William Gallas, World Cup 2010