[TESLA]

WTF


Talk about handball and to ruining Irelands chances of getting to the WC.

'The Hand of Frog'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ0pxDDEJvM

Cheating B*stard

[Flipside]

Why FIFA are so recalcitrant about getting Video footage, or even adding a goal-right linesman is beyond me...

Edit: That said, I don't blame Henry, he's under a hell of a lot of pressure to win, and if the system is broken, and the stakes that high, people will play the system.

[TESLA]

Exactly, if there was a video ref, like in rugby this would never have happened!!!

[Flipside]

By the way, the linked Video isn't the one you were looking for.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/8368100.stm

For those that hadn't already guessed.

[SpardaSon21]

So basically the French cheated at soccer?  Maybe its just because I dislike the French, but I find this unsurprising.

[Flipside]

The problem really lay in the stubborness of FIFA, this has been going on for years, from everyone, being English, the 'Hand of God' incident always comes to mind, but most countries can probably remember at least one incident that is similar.

I think FIFA is so concerned about losing its grip on the game from an authority perspective that they violently resist any implication that the current referee system is not reliable enough for a game that can involve sums of money in the tens of millions of pounds, which, as has been proved on several occasions, it often isn't.

As I said earlier, I don't hold the player personally responsible, the things is that these flaws have been in place for so long that players are actually trained how to do things in a way that can be out of view of linesmen etc. When your training involves 'fooling the ref', that usually implies some inherent problem with the rule-enforcement system.

[Mongoose]

This even made the sports news over here, so it must be a big deal.

I do agree that the fact that such a blatant call was missed is pretty damn ridiculous, but the calls I've heard that Henry should have informed the ref what happened right away are almost equally ridiculous.  I mean...that's not how sports works.  It's your job as a player to do as much as you can to win the game, and it's the job of the referees/umpires to keep you honest.  Self-incrimination isn't part of the deal.

[Flipside]

I think it's a 'last straw' situation for a lot of football fans.

[TESLA]

well, couple of things did make it easier 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nibS1aoowNg

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20091119-irish-take-thievery-henry-handball

[Ghostavo]

I remember discussing the usage of modern surveillance systems in football with Aldo. According to him, those methods are impractical to use without consuming too much time and what data could be obtained from them, would be as prone to error as a normal game.

I disagree nonetheless. It was a fun discussion.

Here.

[Flipside]

Some people consider the drama of it all to be 'part of the game', and it may well once have been that, when international footballers worked all day at the Factory, played evenings and weekends, and often earned more money from the factory than the football. But nowadays, with such vast sums of money involved, as well as footballers' careers, I'm not sure it can really be justified for much longer.

There's already genuine hatred for Henry in some corners, when it wasn't really him that was at fault, at the end of the day people shouldn't get angry that Henry hand-balled, they should, instead get angry that he didn't get caught doing it, not because the facilities don't exist, but because the rulemakers haven't changed from the Factory and weekends era.

[Turambar]

If anyone's paying attention to Algeria and Egypt it's almost becoming a serious international incident.

[Flipside]

Y'see this is why, when I want to watch 11 men attack a sphere, I watch Star-Wars

[NGTM-1R]

According to him, those methods are impractical to use without consuming too much time and what data could be obtained from them, would be as prone to error as a normal game.

All evidence points to this being wrong, truthfully. American sporting organizations have resisted it just as heavily, but those that lost their battles (the NFL comes to mind, with its challenge system) are typically better for it.

[Mongoose]

Even baseball, which is by far the most tradition-oriented of our major sports, finally implemented replay for very limited circumstances (home runs and fair/foul at the foul poles is it, I think), and it's generally worked well enough that there have been calls to expand its use to things like all foul balls and safe/out calls at the bases.  (Of course, balls/strikes could never be treated that way.)  NGTM-1R already mentioned the NFL's challenge system, which is almost universally praised, and ice hockey and basketball have similar systems for pucks crossing the goal line and buzzer-beating shots, respectively.  There's always going to be some small margin of error, since in the end it's a human being looking at the video, but having the ability to use slow-motion and multiple camera angles significantly reduces the chance of a call being wrong.  In all the sports I mentioned, the calls in question don't seem to take up exorbitant amounts of time, especially since they're relatively rare events.

(Though I do have to wonder how exactly the time issue would work in soccer, what with that utterly goofy system of not stopping the clock when the ball goes out-of-bounds and instead relying on that nebulously-defined "stoppage time."  Seriously, you could nerf that whole silly concept with one guy operating the clock. )

[Reprobator]

Well, i'd like to apologize for this to all irish soccer fan, we should not win this match as the "blue" were dominated for the match long, this is really an unglorious victory and mostly people here in france consider we should not win this match.
I still doesn't understand why fifa did not implemented video playback.

Anyway they won't go far in the world cup i guess as they had so much difficulty to qualify them self.

Anyway judging a whole people for arbitration mistake in a sports game sounds silly to me.

[Lucika]

I do agree that the fact that such a blatant call was missed is pretty damn ridiculous, but the calls I've heard that Henry should have informed the ref what happened right away are almost equally ridiculous.

Okay. But then why does he act out the faithful at the interview after? At least Domenech had the balls to openly lie in the face of the reporters, stating that he doesn't know what are they talking about.

[Mongoose]

After the game is over, the deed's already done, so his admitting what happened wouldn't cost his team anything.  But in the middle of the match itself, he's not going to say anything that would overturn his own goal...as I said above, that's the job of the referees.  No sports player should be expected to correct an official's mistakes in a way that would wind up hurting their own team; that kind of defeats the entire purpose of the system.

[karajorma]

Yep. It's the job of the referees to stop this kind of nonsense happening. You can bet fairly large sums of money that none of the Irish players would have reported it had it been one of their number who committed the handball.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Y'see this is why, when I want to watch 11 men attack a sphere, I watch Star-Wars

More like an entire army playing football inside a sphere.