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Road to South Africa: Regarding Henry
By Martin Rogers
November 19, 2009
The defining moment of World Cup qualifying’s final day was one that had no place being associated with the greatest event in international soccer.
Thierry Henry’s deliberate handball that set up France’s playoff victory against the Republic of Ireland has already sparked heavy and heated debate across the soccer globe. However, there is only one thing that needs to be known about the incident, and now, about Henry.
He is a cheat.
Whether his action is as serious as a baseball player taking steroids or a boxer loading his gloves is irrelevant. He deliberately and knowingly flouted the laws of the game to the direct benefit of his team. The only thing stopping this act from joining Diego Maradona’s Hand of God in eternal infamy is that this controversial goal took place in a playoff and the other in a World Cup quarterfinal.
Henry likes to portray himself as a moralist, an upholder of fair play and good sportsmanship. But when crunch time came, the Barcelona striker lowered himself to back-alley tactics and cheated a brave Irish team.
All’s fair in love and soccer, yet if there is any justice France will suffer the same fate it did at the 2002 World Cup – elimination in the group stage.
It is not often that I call for instant replay in soccer. There are simply too many borderline decisions and video footage would cause too much disruption to the flow of play. Yet how the Irish nation must have wished for such a system Wednesday night, as goalkeeper Shay Given and his colleagues surrounded the referee and could not believe that such a blatant infringement had not been spotted.
Incidents such as this are part of the reason why FIFA is so often accused of favoritism toward bigger nations, who draw larger audiences and create extra revenue if they appear in major tournaments.
Time and time again, crucial calls in critical matches have gone the way of the higher-profile team. Irish defender Richard Dunne hinted at foul play.
“It was ridiculous really and unfortunately it’s what we thought was going to happen,” Dunne said. “The World Cup is run by people who want to decide who gets there. Big teams get big decisions. The referee says he was 100 percent certain that Henry didn’t handball it but Henry said to me that he did.
“It’s not a difficult one to see. The linesman was in line with it. We deserved to win. We could have got a couple of goals but theirs knocked the stuffing out of us.”
Conspiracy or not, the handball furor was a desperately disappointing end to what has been a thrilling World Cup qualifying campaign. Let us pray there are no more similar controversies when the tournament itself begins next June.
World Cup power rankings
1. Brazil – A class above other World Cup favorites.
2. Spain – Euro champs are looking to go all the way.
3. Germany – Will be ruthless and organized as ever.
4. Holland – Effortless stroll through qualifying.
5. Ivory Coast – The pick of the African teams.
6. Italy – Recovered from Confederations Cup disaster.
7. England – Needs its big stars at full fitness.
8. Portugal – Scraped through. Now Ronaldo must step up.
9. Argentina – Not at its best under Maradona.
10. France – Lucky to qualify. Needs big improvement.
11. Denmark – Quality side must show big-game mentality.
12. Cameroon – Tough and skilful and capable of a deep run.
13. Ghana – Confident team capable of beating anyone.
14. United States – Needs everyone fit, a good draw and more consistency.
15. Australia – Talented squad lacks some attacking firepower.
16. South Africa – Will have home advantage and an easy draw.
17. Serbia – Point to prove on the biggest stage.
18. Chile – Classy outfit but untested outside South America.
19. Paraguay – Lost momentum toward the end of qualifying.
20. Greece – Great defense but won’t score enough.
21. Slovakia – Had a great campaign and an emerging force.
22. Mexico – Not good enough away from home.
23. Slovenia – Determined side that never gives up.
24. Switzerland – Came through a weak group.
25. Uruguay – Edged past Costa Rica in playoff.
26. Nigeria – Weakest of the African qualifiers.
27. Japan – Limited team lacks creative spark.
28. South Korea – Not good enough at this level.
29. Honduras – Inexperienced but will give it a go.
30. Algeria – Overcame Egypt in an emotional playoff.
31. New Zealand – Superb effort to reach finals.
32. North Korea – Expect some heavy defeats.
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World Cup soccer qualifier offers Americans something to relate to
By Laurent Rebours
November 19, 2009
Ireland's coach Giovanni Trappatoni, front, reacts with player Glenn Whelan during their World Cup qualifying playoff second leg soccer match against France. A handball by French player Thierry Henry kept Ireland out of the World Cup.
The world today is united. Football needs replay.
No, no. Not that football. Not the one where the Jets coach needs a Kleenex and the Patriots coach goes all-in on fourth down and the Bengals celebrate their new respectability by hiring a running back who has been accused four times of assaulting women.
We refer to the football where the players are in short pants and the fans can have short tempers.
Ireland is ticked. We're talking the whole republic, from Dublin to Killarney.
Maybe you missed the World Cup soccer qualifier between Ireland and France. The goal that settled it for France was scored in the 103rd minute, set up by Thierry Henry, who controlled a pass with his hand so implanted on the ball, the boys at the police lab would have found fingerprints.
You don't have to know Beckham from Bozo the clown to understand that the use of hands in soccer is against the rules. But … no call. France goes to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Ireland goes home, seething and bitter, the only recourse left to drown its sorrows in its Guinness.
Or, as the Irish newspaper's headline proclaimed: "Thierry, the thief."
Or, as Richard Dunne, one of the Irish players, was quoted: "I think it's quite blatant we were cheated."
Or, as a columnist from Dublin offered, "Henry has to live with this on his conscience the rest of his life."
And Bud Selig thought he got a headache when the umpires started blowing calls in October? Barely a ripple on a farm pond compared to this.
The problem is easy enough to spot, in a sport that can claim so much.
World Cup soccer has billions of fans and global fervor.
Soccer has mayhem.
(Note this business-as-usual line from deep in one of the Internet stories about another qualifier: "Fighting between a Uruguayan camera crew and the Costa Rican bench players halted the match for almost five minutes.")
Soccer has chaos.
(Another line from another story: "Twenty Algerian fans were injured and three players suffered cuts after Egyptian fans stoned their bus.")
Soccer has some of the coolest national team names around.
Included in the World Cup field of 32 are the Australia Socceroos, the Ivory Coast Elephants and the Cameroon Indomitable Lions.
Soccer has a campaign to determine its World Cup teams longer and more tortuous than the U.S. presidential primaries. The field for 2010 was set Wednesday. Qualifications began in 2007.
But guess what soccer doesn't have?
Right. The use of replay to overturn wrong calls.
No official in the booth was going to save Ireland. The coach had nothing to hurl onto the pitch to challenge. Soccer has red cards, but no red flags.
Upon further review … well, there won't be one.
Finally, a way to make soccer more connected to the U.S. masses. Many citizens from these shores don't care why you have a corner kick. But a raging debate over the use of replay, that they get on every bar stool in America.
Besides, a missed call in a baseball game means controversy. A missed call keeping a team out of the World Cup means Armageddon.
Maybe the use of replay would also help soccer rid itself of the phantom fouls. If you recall the 2006 World Cup, there were more guys taking falls than every crooked contender in the history of boxing.
It's too late for the Irish to do anything but protest, though. Now they know how the Minnesota Twins fans felt, watching a double against the Yankees ruled a foul ball.
The umpire who blew that call, Phil Cuzzi, to his credit faced the media music and admitted his error.
The referee in the France-Ireland match comes from Sweden. The guess is, he probably is now enrolled in the Gothenburg witness protection program.
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Algeria beats Egypt 1-0 to reach 2010 World Cup
November 19, 2009
KHARTOUM, Sudan — Algeria qualified for its first World Cup in 24 years with a 1-0 win over Egypt on Wednesday, triggering wild celebrations in Algiers.
A stunning first-half strike by defender Antar Yahya gave Algeria victory in the playoff match.
Yahya’s 39th minute winner came against the run of play when he took advantage of a lapse in concentration by Egypt’s defenders to hit a perfect volley in off the underside of the crossbar with his right foot from an acute angle.
The win sent thousands of people, including veiled women, to the streets of the Algerian capital Algiers to celebrate, with some setting off fireworks. Traffic came to a standstill in the center of the city.
The match was played in Khartoum, Sudan, after the two teams finished their group matches level on points and having scored and conceded the same number of goals.
The win means Algeria will make its first appearance at a World Cup since 1986 and once again highlighted Egypt’s inability to carry its impressive form in Africa—it has won the African Cup a record six times — into World Cup qualification tournaments.
Egypt last appeared at a World Cup in 1990.
Failing once again to reach the game’s biggest stage is likely to be hard to take for the football-mad nation.
Egypt dominated possession without creating many goalscoring opportunities, while Algeria always looked dangerous on the break.
Algeria become the fifth African nation to reach the finals, alongside Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
South Africa qualified as the host nation.
It was sweet revenge for the Algerians who were denied a second successive World Cup appearance when in 1989 the Egyptians won 1-0 at home in a make-or-break qualifying game that sent them to the 1990 World Cup.
Wednesday’s match in Khartoum’s Mareikh stadium was only possible after Egypt’s Imad Motaeb scored deep in injury time to seal a 2-0 win over Algeria in Cairo Saturday.
The rivalry between the two has been fierce for decades with a history of fan violence.
It turned violent again when Egyptian fans pelted the bus carrying Algeria’s team to their hotel soon after their arrival in Cairo last week. Three players were injured.
Fans battled each other in both Cairo and Algiers after the Cairo game. At least 32 people were injured following the game and the next day Egyptian businesses were ransacked in Algeria.
The tension and the violence prompted top government officials from both Arab nations to call for calm and prevent the soccer rivalry from damaging relations.
Cairo was eerily quiet during and immediately after the Khartoum game in stark contrast to the jubilation that swept the city of some 18 million people after Saturday’s game and up till Wednesday’s kickoff.
The atmosphere in Algiers was jubilant.
Women in hijabs, or veils, waved Algerian flags in a rare sight in the conservative North African nation and similarly euphoric scenes were seen in the French capital Paris and the port city of Marseille, home to large Algerian communities. Hundreds of youths there honked car horns, waved the Algerian flag and took victory laps down Paris’ famed Champs-Elysees.
Lineups:
Egypt: Issam al-Hadari (GK), Waiel Gomaa, Hani Said, Abdul-Dhaher al-Saqqa (Ahmed Eid, 75), Ahmed Fathi (Hosni Abdul-Raboh, 46), Ahmed al-Mohammadi, Mohammed Abu Trekka, Sayed Mouawad, Ahmed Hassan, Imad Motaeb, Amr Zaki (Mohammed Zeidan, 46).
Algeria: Fawzi Shawashi (GK), Antar Yahya (Samir Zawy, 62), Nazeer Benhaj, Murad Mughni (Kareem Matmour, 57), Rafeek Halliche, Kareem Zayani, Rafeek Sayfi (Gilasi, 80), Hussein Yabdi, Abdul-Qader Ghazali, Majeed Bouqara, Yazeed Mansouri.
Referee: Maillet Eddy (Seychelles)
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Donovan wins MLS MVP award for first time
By TIM BOOTH
November 19, 2009
SEATTLE, WA — Long considered the best player in the U.S., Landon Donovan is now the best player in Major League Soccer.
The Los Angeles Galaxy forward and six-time national player of the year was named the MLS most valuable player on Thursday for the first time in his career.
Despite all his accolades as the leader of the U.S. national team, Donovan had yet to be recognized by his own league until this season when he helped the Galaxy race to the MLS Cup final and overcome some of his own off-the-field distractions.
Los Angeles will face Real Salt Lake for the MLS title on Sunday night in Seattle. Donovan beat out FC Dallas’ Jeff Cunningham, the league’s goal scoring leader with a career-best 17 goals, and New England midfielder Shalrie Joseph for the award.
“I think rewarding is the right word,” Donovan said. “We’ve worked very hard to get where we are with this team. Sometimes you almost feel bad that we keep winning awards and keep getting this and that. When you think about it, we deserve it. This team has worked really hard, but if we don’t win Sunday these things aren’t going to mean a whole lot.”
It’s already been the longest and most trying year of Donovan’s career.
Donovan, 27, was instrumental in the Americans’ successful qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup and its trek to the Confederations Cup championship match, large factors in him winning an unprecedented sixth Honda Player of the Year Award last month.
He scored 12 goals in the regular season and added six assists for the Galaxy, despite missing a month of the season in helping lead the U.S. to the Confederations Cup final. That total followed up on last season when Donovan scored a league-high 20 goals, but missed out on the MVP award as Los Angeles finished last in the Western Conference.
This year, Donovan was the leader. Los Angeles was the best team in the West, overcoming a remarkable 11 ties in its first 13 games to take the top spot and qualify for the playoffs for the first time since its run to the title in 2005 as the No. 8 seed.
“He’s grown on the field as a player. He’s a more mature consistent player, but his role off the field with this team has been perhaps even better, remarkable,” Galaxy coach Bruce Arena said recently. “The things he did to help build this team to have the right kind of team chemistry, to be a leader … Landon was consistently here every day and taking the responsibility of a captain. He’s been doing a fantastic job.”
And it wasn’t just the regular season where Donovan excelled. Donovan scored in the opener of the Galaxy’s first-round series against rival Chivas USA, then added a penalty kick goal versus Chivas to help clinch the playoff victory in the second-leg.
In the conference final last Friday against Houston, Donovan’s overtime penalty kick goal cemented the 2-0 victory and a spot in the league championship game. He now has 17 career playoff goals, most in league history.
Donovan’s 2009 season grabbed plenty of attention for what happened away from his time on the field with the Galaxy. He spent three months on loan to German powerhouse Bayern Munich and was not offered a full contract. His marriage, to actress Bianca Kajlich, dissolved.
And he was a major figure in Grant Wahl’s “The Beckham Experiment,” a book chronicling and critical of David Beckham’s first two seasons with the Galaxy. Donovan criticized Beckham’s leadership and effort in the book, and he apologized to the English star for airing his thoughts in public.
Since Beckham returned to the Galaxy from a loan deal to Italy’s AC Milan, he and Donovan developed a strong partnership that has helped fuel their run to the league championship game.
“I can look myself in the mirror this year and say I really worked hard and earned this and I’m proud of it,” Donovan said. “It’s one thing to be voted a most valuable player by the media or be named an All-star by the fans, but when your peers vote for you it means a little bit more.”
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