The blame game fails to find a winner
Yep, our old friend Martin Hansson rolled back the months with a double-whammy on Wednesday night, first telling George Hamilton on a flight to Portugal that he’d initially thought William Gallas and not Thierry Henry had handled the ball in Paris, and then making another bid for infamy with his handling, if you’ll pardon the pun, of Porto’s Champions’ League game against Arsenal.
Where to begin? Back in Paris, I’m afraid. Almost entirely forgotten now is that, on that seismic night in the Stade de France, Hansson was having an exceptionally good game right up to the moment when the roof fell in for officialdom and for Ireland’s World Cup hopes. Dashing the theory that he might have felt under pressure to ensure the top seeds progressed, he even had the gumption to deny Nicolas Anelka a solid penalty shout after the striker had tangled with Shay Given, an incident which provided the ref with the perfect opportunity to load the dice in favour of les Bleus. That he chose not to also undermines the notion that he then deliberately turned a blind eye to the most high-profile case of double handball in football history.
No, all the evidence suggests that Hansson was, as he always maintained, genuinely unsighted when Henry illegally kept the ball in play in a crowded goalmouth. Which is where I would have been content enough to let things lie had his admission to George Hamilton not raised the unhappy conclusion that he was unsighted not once, not twice, but three times in a single passage of play: first and second when Henry did his old one-two and then when Gallas headed home. Because, according to the ref’s testimony, he initially thought, from the vehemence of the Irish protests, that Gallas had handled the ball. So he went to Gallas, asked him if he’d been a bold boy and when the Arsenal man truthfully answered no, waved away the apoplectic green shirts and gave the goal. And the rest, as they say, is hysteria.
So flash-forward to Wednesday night and, this time, Hansson and his officials contrived to miss a pretty clearcut penalty when Thomas Rosicky was felled in the box.
But that wasn’t what made our man public enemy number one in the very part of north London where Mr Henry used to ply his trade.
No, it was his role in Porto’s winning goal which had Gooners gurning and Arsene Wenger back on the that well-worn thoroughfare of his, the warpath. “It is not my job to judge is he good enough or not, I just feel in that game he is shown that he is not competent,” said Wenger yesterday, performing the neat trick of at once renouncing the wig and gown and pronouncing a guilty verdict.
But here’s the thing: on this charge, the Swede is innocent. And if Wenger should be sending anyone to the guillotine its Lucasz Fabianski, with Sol Campbell next in the queue.
Look at the sequence of events again: Campbell is not sure if his ‘keeper is coming to collect and tentatively pokes the ball back. Fabianski collects anyway. Free kick. Campbell pauses to bend down, head in hands. By the time he regains his composure, Fabianski has obligingly handed the ball to Hansson. The ref puts it on the ground and admirably quick-thinking Porto players combine to stroke it into a virtually unguarded net.
On all counts this was a self-inflicted wound of monumental proportions, even down to Campbell’s belated response to a mess partly of his making. That he then found the ref blocking his way by the time he stopped feeling sorry for himself had less to do with the official’s suspect positioning than the defender’s. Wenger can blame the referee all he likes but, for the life of me, I can’t see any way in which Martin Hansson broke the rules. On the contrary, he enforced one of the key principles of the game – and should be lauded for it. After all, in calling a foul, in this case correctly, surely the basic idea is to punish the offending side by giving the opposition at least a theoretical advantage. That’s all that happened on Wednesday night, except that, like Mikey Sheehy against Paddy Cullen all those years ago, Porto gleefully took maximum advantage and, in the process, gave football a new word: ‘Farcenal.
Which brings me to one of the saner comments on the whole affair, as expressed by one Joel Bradley of London in a pithy e-mail to the Football365 website. (Admittedly, Gooners might like to look away now). Writes Joel: “All this kerfuffle about the second Porto goal, isn’t everyone missing the main point? It was absolutely fantastic.”
And so to the really big talking point of the week, the long-awaited clash at Tolka Park today (kick off 2pm) between an Irish Examiner/Sunday Business Post XI and an Irish Independent XI. The match is in aid of Haven which builds homes in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. All the players have raised sponsorship to play and, while entry is free to the stadium, you are encouraged to make donations at www.havenpartnership.com.
Among the well-known exponents of the beautiful game will be David McWilliams, Richard Curran and our own John Riordan who has substantially raised the stakes by promising, admittedly in a private conversation with myself, to nutmeg Richard Sadlier – who is facing a late fitness test.
Sadly, your humble correspondent will be unable to take part, since I am currently the victim of a grotesquely unfair ban on trumped-up charges of violent play, match-fixing, drug abuse, sexual impropriety and extra-curricular banjo-playing.
Needless to say, I blame the ref.
