Football Association of Ireland Chief Executive John Delaney is calling for the integrity of my blog to be questioned and the FAI is demanding a replay of my previous The Occasional Rant.
"Only don't tell me that you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry. Now, who approached you first? Barzini or Tattalgia?"................... Let's make one thing perfectly clear about this whole situation with the Henry handball: FIFA got what they wanted at the cost of their integrity, but it didn't start at that controversial qualizer.
Prior to this incident was the fact that FIFA changed the rules of the UEFA zone playoff draw, once it became possible that World powers France, Portugal, and Germany were thought to be in the playoff mix (Germany avoided this and won their qualifying group). Originally it was supposed to be 8 teams, one pot, two teams drawn out means they play each other and then the process would be complete. Realizing the danger of any of these three teams failing to qualify for their big event, FIFA seeded the playoff teams based on their rankings. As a result; France, Portugal, and Russia avoid drawing each other. Ireland were angry with this ruling at the time as well because, you guessed it, they faced the prospect of drawing any of these teams due to their lower world ranking.
So should the events of yesterday shock you? While I was outraged and now my wife thinks Thierry Henry is the devil, in retrospect it shouldn't come as a shock. FIFA seemed to be going to unreasonable lengths to get the big boys into their tournament next summer. First by changing the rules toward the end of the qualifying campaign, and now by allowing an illegal goal to stand.
But let's make sure that something gets understood here, it would be an even bigger shock if FIFA lets the integrity of the game prevail and allows the match to be replayed. There is a precedent, believe it or not, when Uzbekistan and Bahrain were forced to replay a playoff in World Cup 2006 qualifying because of an official's decision to call a penalty that was incorrect. But the precedent only goes as far as enforcing the replay, as football365.com reports, because FIFA ruled that the official wrongly applied the Laws of the Game. Here's the blurb about it from their website:
However, in that instance, the referee was guilty of wrongly applying the rules rather than missing an offence. An indirect free-kick was awarded against Uzbekistan when one of their players encroached on the Bahrain penalty area as the Uzbeks successfully converted a penalty. The correct interpretation would have been to order the penalty to be retaken.
In the France v Ireland situation, it's a matter of the referee missing an offense, not of a failure to correctly apply the rules. On those grounds, it's hard to justify a replay. Plus, it's a little easier to order Uzbekistan and Bahrain to have a replay than to have the French agree to anything after they have seized victory.
Weird cruel twist of irony or something like that from all of this.....................I also have to get a half-chuckle out of all of this. Many of you have probably seen that commercial which campaigns sportsmanship. If you haven't here goes. It's a high school championship basketball game and a key play happens where a ball goes out of bounds off a pass deflected by the opposing player. The referee misses the deflection and rewards possession to the opposing team. During a timeout, the player tells the coach he touched it and needs to tell the officials as much. His teammates are mad at him but the coach commends him for his honesty. Wild guess, but Thierry Henry probably never saw this commercial. I can only remember watching this the night before the France-Ireland game and saying to my wife: "you tell me when this is ever going to happen in an important game." Love the message of the ad, but reality paints a different picture.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been to the Great Wall of China, I have seen the Pyramids of Egypt, I've even witnessed a grown man satisfy a camel. But never in all my years as a sportscaster have I witnessed something as improbable, as impossible, as what we've witnessed here today!"...................................... If the Hand of Fraud doesn't trigger FIFA to start getting more aggressive with putting in motion some form of replay technology, then nothing will. My proposal would be to give the 4th official a monitor to look at for each goal and some of the other activity (like overruling penalties when the foul might have been simulated). All the 4th official is doing now is wearing a FIFA or UEFA jacket, keeping track of stoppage time to add on, and serving coffee and bread to each of the teams' technical areas. Give him a monitor to review these goals. Strides have been made with allowing the officials to have headsets, now let's make the next natural progression.
No, Tom Henning Overbo is not sending Martin Hansson a gift basket to thank him for taking the attention away................................................. I have harped on this in the past, as someone who coaches this sport. There is a universal theme in competitive athletics that no one seems to talk about.
If you do not want the officials to become a factor that contributes to you being on the wrong end of a result, then do your part to make sure that doesn't happen. Be grouchy all you want about Martin Hansson (and the assistant referee who was not in position, either to make the call), but in so doing, be sure you call out John O'Shea, Robbie Keane, and Damien Duff all for missing great chances that would have prevented extra time from happening in the first place. I said the same thing about Chelsea and the chances they missed to put Barcelona away in the Champions League semifinals.
I am not apologzing for the ineptitude of the officials, I am just recognizing that more could be done by the team you support. And say the officials got it right, it's not like the Irish would go to South Africa, they would still need to beat France on penalties.
Kinda like a tree falling in a forest but no one was around to witness it, so did it really fall?....................................... No, I don't think Russia is finding any consolation in what happened in Paris. No matter who grabs all the headlines in the last day of qualifying, that was an all-timer of a meltdown from the Russians in their defeat at Slovenia.
There is no truth to the rumor that Guus Hiddink will be shopping for houses in Madrid or Liverpool in the coming weeks. At least not yet.
The Irish aren't the only ones that got jobbed................................. the World Cup draw will take place on December 4th and the World will be watching to see how the pool play will shake out for the first round. The 32 nations will be divided into 8 pots of 4 teams each. The first pot are the seeded teams based on current FIFA ranking and performance in the previous World Cups. Why I bring this up is because France now will be a seeded team. Had they been eliminated by Ireland, Holland would have likely been a seeded team. Portugal and USA might have also had a case.
So what to expect from the draw on December 4th? Knee-jerk reaction on my part thinks this will be how the pots are organized:
Pot 1 (Seeded teams): South Africa (host), Italy (holders), Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain, England, and France.
Holland, Portugal, and even the USA might have a beef with this but this is likely how it will turn out for the seeded teams. Put in the same pot so they avoid matching up with each other in the first round.
Pot 2: Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Algeria, Nigeria, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay
Geographical consideration will be taken into account when these teams are drawn. FIFA will keep the African teams in this pot from being in South Africa's group. Also, The South American teams in this pot will be kept from getting drawn into Brazil or Argentina's group.
Pot 3: Denmark, Holland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece, Switzerland, and Serbia.
Straight draw, no restrictions, and set up in the manner that no more than 2 European teams can be drawn in the same group.
Pot 4: USA, Mexico, Honduras, North Korea, South Korea, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.
Same as pot 3, a straight draw with no restrictions.
The other aspect of the group phase will be the position in the group each team will start in. All seeded teams are automatically in position 1 in their group, so the other teams will be assigned position 2, 3, or 4. If they are in position 2, they play the seeded team in their group first.
So what does this mean for the good 'ol USA? Well, based on my scenario:
- Nightmare Draw: Brazil, Ivory Coast, Holland
- Dream Draw: South Africa, Paraguay, Slovenia (France may not be bad either with Algeria and Slovenia)
Of course so many things can happen and the ultimate hope for Sam's Army is the easiest path to the 2nd round possible. Nonetheless, it looks like the World Cup will have some intriguing matchups from the first round onwards. All the previous champions are in it this time around, and 23 of FIFA's top 32 are represented.
Worst FIFA-ranked World Cup team? North Korea, sitting at 91st. New Zealand and South Africa sit in the 80s.
Top ranked team not participating in the World Cup? That would be Croatia, ranked 8th in the World.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading my rant about one of the more controversial moments in football.
