Is it okay to break a rule in sports if you don’t get caught? In baseball, especially, cheating is not only tolerated; it’s celebrated. If a pitcher can throw a spitball and not get caught, all the better for him. But in most other sports, cheating is seen as, well, cheating. If you do it, you’re a jerk.
Last week, a soccer match between the French and Irish national teams ended in a 1-1 tie, bouncing the Irish from next year’s World Cup in South Africa. The Irish were winning 1-0 late in the game, on their way to apparent victory, when a French player, Thierry Henry, used his hand to steady the ball. He then passed to another French player, who headed in the tying goal.
Here’s the sequence:
As you can see, the Irish players immediately go nuts, raising their hands to show the referee that Henry committed a handball violation. But the referee didn’t see it, and doesn’t make the call. Later, Henry admitted it was a handball, but he claimed it was an instinctive reaction and not an intentional cheat:
“I have said at the time and I will say again that yes I handled the ball. I am not a cheat and never have been. It was an instinctive reaction to a ball that was coming extremely fast in a crowded penalty area.”
He went on to say that he felt “embarrassed at the way that we won and feel extremely sorry for the Irish who definitely deserve to be in South Africa.” He also called for a rematch, an idea soccer’s governing body, FIFA, rejected.
Henry, who is by most accounts a decent person and an ambassador for the game, has been vilified by soccer fans worldwide. I can’t decide how I feel about the whole affair. Should he have made the call on his own? Some will say yes, though that would be truly unprecedented at that level of soccer. Should he have celebrated the goal as enthusiastically as he did? No, probably not.
But does he deserve the battering he’s getting from angry fans? A single moment on a soccer field changed the season, and Henry’s life, forever. Did he do it on purpose? If so, I’m sure he wishes he hadn’t.
Don’t know whether he did it on purpose — it looked to quick and instinctive, I’m willing to take his word for it that he didn’t. What’s more interesting to me is whether Henry had a duty to tell the ref. I don’t think a player ordinarily has that duty, but given how pivotal this goal was, and in a WC qualifier, I don’t know.
A player’s greatest responsibility is to his or her team, and by extension his or her team’s backers. Refs miss calls all the time, and the assumption should be that in the end, some will go your way, and some will go the other team’s way. This is why prolonged complaining over a single call is ridiculous.
That’s the game; the referee didn’t call a foul. You don’t call your own violations/fouls in any sport I know of except golf. I agree with ScottyMcGee.
There were three Major League baseball umpires talking about umpiring behind home plate-
Ump #1 said: There are strikes and there are balls, I call ‘em the way I see ‘em.
Ump #2 said: There are strikes and there are balls, I call ‘em the way they are.
Ump #3 said: They ain’t nothin’ until I call ‘em.
The fouls are what the referee calls.
I’ve watched this sequence over and over since it happened. It looks to me like the ball hit Henry’s wrist and then he tapped it with his hand. He continued to play because it all happened so fast.
Is he a cheat? That’s a really fine line to draw, I’d say, and through an incredibly grey area. The amount of adrenaline release at a moment like that — not only was it a World Cup qualifier, it was in extra time — is just incredible. A stadium of around 50,000 French fans was going nuts; his teammates were rushing to congratulate him. (From many angles it’s impossible to see what happened, and it isn’t really clear if William Gallas, the player who scored the goal, could tell how Henry got the ball to him.) For him to stop and say, “Wait! No! I handled the ball. No goal,” at that moment is almost impossible and contrary to the nature of competition at that level. Also, it’s not clear that the referee would have accepted such a call. It’s *his* job, not Henry’s.
The real failure is on the part of FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, which should have instant replay available *and* extra assistant referees stationed behind the goals for games as crucial as this one.
For a much clearer moment of cheating at the top level of soccer, check out Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal in a World Cup quarter final in 1986. Argentina beat England that day, largely because of this goal, and went on to win the tournament.
In cricket people are generally expected to make calls against themselves (particularly historically) when they know (as batters) that they are out. But cricket is not only fiendishly subtle (and the matter usually focuses around that most enigmatic ‘out’ LBW or Leg Before Wicket, which I won’t even try to explain unless someone needs a quick cure for insomnia) and quintessentially English where the manner in which the game is played is frightfully important. This has changed somewhat over the years, but there is still an amount of tsking and frothing where a player chooses to wait for a ref call (either human or camera) rather than walking when they know they are out. Personally I’d rather integrity won: I can’t see the point of winning otherwise. It takes the triumph out, if you ask me.
LP, you posed such a great question, proven by the equally compelling counter arguments on the issue. I love that someone raised this. It was hotly debated in our household, too.