We Irish are fit to make a middling fist of cynicism. After all, it’s a well fashionable attitude. But at heart we are anything but. Tell us a good myth and we will buy it, hook, line and most probably sinker. We believe in the dream. Whether it be the American Dream, the Roman Church Dream, the Celtic Tiger Dream or the Good Intentions of Fianna Fail Dream. Now that the dust has begun to settle slightly on the Main de Dieu affair, what lessons are we to take from the sorry tale of Ireland’s unfair departure from the World Cup?
For a start, let’s agree that the let’s-get-a-grip people have a point. It is not the end of the world that we missed out on qualifying for the World Cup. Yes, it cost us a lot of money. Yes, it was unfair. But there are so many more serious issues facing us; floods, global warming, the financial crisis, list them yourself. But football, as has been observed before, is a metaphor for life. Football makes us feel good. Football in the 1980’s was one of the absurd things that gave us a previously lacking belief in ourselves, that took us out of the post colonial doldrums. It has sometimes been said that Jack Charlton and – for entirely different reasons – Mary Robinson started the Celtic Tiger. And whatever about these big brush strokes one thing is sure. A strange tinge of regret will linger in Irish hearts as we watch Henry, Gallas and friends go about their business in South Africa 2010. Our minds will inevitably drift back to a November evening in 2009.
Remember? First off, we sang. The 5000 or so of us who had forked out and travelled to the match sang their lungs out for Amhrain na bFiann, but they sang Les Marseillaise nearly as lustily, shoulder to shoulder with our hosts. They bought into the occasion, into the pageant, into the competition with our traditional belief, commitment and humour. The rest of us sang along mentally with the TV. The country is small, and many of the Irish soccer fans would also have watched rugby matches at the Stade de France. We like the French. We knew a lot of their players, some in particular from their high profile gigs in England. The feeling in our hearts was more of hope than of conviction, being 1 – 0 down from the first leg. But we do the role of underdog well. When no one expects much from us, we are always good.
The world of the top flight professional footballer is one far removed from the world inhabited by most football fans. Millions of words have been written about the fishbowl of celebrity. But, like a lot of things, you probably need to be there to really understand what being a famous footballer is all about. We know, but don’t understand their world, a world in which they (generally) start out young, leave (an often modest) home, never grow up and dedicate huge work to their skills and fitness. They pretty well sacrifice everything to become one of the few, the very few who graduate, get through the eye of the needle and fulfil their dreams of fame and riches.
It might be useful to contemplate here some of the threads that bind the fans and these remote football stars together. One such is obvious. It is memory. Most footballers were once fans themselves. They stood on the terraces and dreamed. Another link are the referees, the middle-aged lads who puff and huff through the game blowing (or not blowing) whistles and raising flags. Most of these are part time (although FIFA are said to favour more professional referees), and they are modestly paid, especially in comparison to the celebrities whose play they regulate. Theirs is the epitome of a thankless job. Sometimes all that opposing fans agree on are the failures of the ref and his team.
Another link between fans and players are the managers. However high-flying and however famous a manager, he dare not incur the displeasure of the fans. Losing the dressing room is one thing; but losing the terrace is even more threatening for the career of a gaffer.
At some stage in the Stade de France on 18 November, it dawned on Thierry Henry that he was not playing in a superleague, Spanish or English or French. An international, especially this kind of international, is a different beast. Here you play with the honour of your country at stake. And to most people, even today, that means something. The Irish fans are not cynics; but neither are the French. They too, sang. They too, believed. And from their reaction in various blogs, in overwhelming votes on the Internet, in their calls for the match to be replayed, it is obvious that a sporting occasion, not a win-at-all-costs one was what they thought they were attending. Fans across the globe, English fans, Hungarian fans, Japanese fans, all voiced their outrage and disquiet at the injustice. These are not cynics either. A small minority, of course, insisted on a display of world-weary cynicism. But, as a number of people pointed out, a large proportion of the consumers of football and its associated merchandise are children. And they are not cynical either.
It was informative to listen to a series of professional footballers deliver their verdicts on the subject of the Henry foul that got away. Because of the sacrifices they have made, perhaps because they have had to re-invent super-flexible versions of themselves to get through the eye of the needle, the top players and ex-players have become as cynical as soldiers. Be it Roy Keane or Mick McCarthy. Be it Ronnie Whelan or David Beckham. And this sorry affair gives us a glimpse behind the clichés of football at the real people who perform week in week out for the clubs. You can detect the egos, the arrogance of course. But you can also detect self doubt, self loathing, even in the words of Roy Keane. He seems to be forever fighting a shadow Roy Keane who forgot to bring the footballs to Saipan or who is afraid to win, or who might have let the ball hop in the six yard box, once, at the end of a tired game, and lost everything. He had a fantastic playing career, and has entered the hall of fame as one of the true greats of Ireland and of Manchester United. He always seemed to have time on the ball, even in the most crowded midfield. He had authority on that field of dreams. Yet he left his last management job with an air of Hari Kiri about him. Roy needs to give himself a break. And give others a break, too.
Likewise Stephen Ireland, in a totally different way. Ireland just can’t believe he got through the needle’s narrow eye. He with his gawky body and prematurely receding hair. To convince himself, he keeps flaunting absurdly expensive cars, and giving interviews explaining why he’s not coming back to play for his country. He once said (perhaps in jest) that he hates football. He is every inch the star but all his body language betrays is fear. He is afraid of breaking the spell. He is afraid to play for Ireland, because he might be found out. He might not be good enough. You have to think for a second, when you try to name examples of people at the very top who seem to have kept their innocence and personal balance. But, from a distance, we can venture Ryan Giggs, Richard Dunne, Shay Given. Others have had their difficulties and recovered and carried on. It must be a strange place these lads occupy.
Thierry Henry seems basically to be a nice guy. His post match comments regarding his actions and even his apology for his celebration show that he is a man with a conscience and a sense of justice. It is true that his reaction was confused. He played up the goal, then later sat beside Richard Dunne on the pitch and tried to engage him in discussion. Not because he is a cynic, but because he knew by then that he was a loser, too. He had heard the singing and remembered the faces of the Irish fans. Later he saw the tears of the Irish. The uproar and genuine anger across the world did hurt him. There is no doubt about that. He was the captain in a very real sense of the French team. It is he, reports claim, rather than the vague Domenech, who really leads – and perhaps even picks – the French side. But once the storm broke Henri found himself isolated and abandoned, by the French FA, and – by the tone of his remarks – perhaps even by his playing colleagues. Everyone had to wait to see if he might have to be sacrificed. At this level, the players may be cynical. But the blazer brigade, made up of ex players and wannabe players are cynical squared. Cynical magnified to grotesque levels.
Korea, the World Cup host nation, were cheated into the closing stages of the World Cup finals in 2002, at the expense of Italy. Byron Moreno, the referee of the match, wrongly disallowed a perfectly good Italian goal by Tommasi, and sent off an Italian player unjustly. The Italian coach at the time was one Giovanni Trappatoni. Moreno was later banned for 20 matches in his native Ecuador for playing excessive (13 minutes, after 6 had been signalled) extra time, thereby affecting the results of a match between Liga Deportiva Universitaria de Quito and Barcelona Sporting Club.
The seeding made half way through the 2009 World Cup qualifying competition was clearly designed to affect the results. In the days before the match, the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote that the seeding of the playoff draw had been deliberately loaded in favour of the ‘big’ teams; and they questioned the influence of Adidas, sponsors of the French team. Right from the start, the preference of the world governing body were clear. This put – even if no pressure other than this was exerted – a terrible strain on one of the key links between the fans and the never-never land of top level football. The referee.
On the night of the match the Swedish official Hansson decided to employ a conventional ‘left handed’ diagonal system of control to monitor and regulate play. This system basically breaks the pitch into four quadrants. At the time when the French got their ‘goal’, the first two quadrants were in the Irish half (Q1 was on Shay Givens right) and the other two were in the French half. The ref was diagonally patrolling from quadrant four to quadrant one, leaving his first assistant, Wittberg, quadrant 3 in the French half and a guy called Frederik Nilsson, the second assistant, quadrant 2 along the left side of the Irish touchline. From the endless replays, Nilsson seemed to be the only one with a clear view of the incident. It was his direct responsibility to spot that two French players were offside as the ball came in. He was standing in the correct position, directly in line with the last defender. Inexplicably, though, he missed both the handball and the offside. Nilsson, unlike Hansson, is not a full time ref. He is down on the FIFA site as a ‘foreman’.
When the Irish players protested, referee Martin Hansson made a gesture as if the ball was striking his chest and the side of his body. His message was; I saw it (or he saw it), it was a good goal, you are wrong to protest. He even booked Damien Duff for over-zealous complaints. Of course video evidence seconds later showed that it was the ref that was wrong. Blatantly wrong. Did he consult with his linesman via his audio link? Presumably. There have been incidents where the officials have ‘unofficially’ used the television replay to make a judgement. [I have since been told by a Frenchman that they don't show the slow-mo in the Stade de France]. And in the minutes leading up to that replay, somehow Hansson got a completely wrong impression of what happened. Not no impression, mark you, but the WRONG one.
Anyway, Hansson made his decision, the game re-started, and that was that. The Irish played on. In fairness to him, Nilsson had – rightly – flagged an Italian ‘goal’ by Sidney Govou as offside in the 111th minute. The referee also denied Nicholas Anelka a penalty claim when the Frenchman dived. In general, fans agreed, the Swedish officials had a good game, until the lapse in the first half of extra time.
After the world wide post-match inquest began, the focus shifted away from Henry and the Swedish referees and on to the world body and its officials. FIFA were already in their bunker. A bland version of the match was described on their website, omitting for the first 24 hours any mention of the handball. They cited the rules of the game in their statement responding to the FAI call for a replay. The referee’s decision is final, they said, pointing to the rule book. Only – the referee’s decision is not final, it turns out. Uzbekistan and Bahrain had a game replayed under the stewardship of FIFA during the 2006 qualifiers, on the basis of a referee’s mistake.
And here, I would suggest, lies the greatest danger for Sepp Blatter and the suits in FIFA. As long as The Threads That Bind the true fans to the strange world of the booted gladiators hold, their position (and those of sponsors, etc.) is safe. But break that spell, and get half a million of them baying for blood and you can forget the deals. You can forget the massive edifice that is world football. Because, like the banking system, the entire thing works on the basis of confidence. World wrestling is fun, but no one believes it is real. If the paying football punters were to become as cynical as the players, not to mention the officers of the governing bodies, the world game would not last a wet week. Stay un-cynical, Ireland fans, and true fans everywhere. Believe, for as long as you can.
Tags: cheat, cynic, FAI, FIFA, floods, handball, Henry, referee, replay, sport, World Cup
