Whelan: Henry did nothing wrong

RONNIE WHELAN believes FIFA were right not to impose any kind of sanction on Thierry Henry and says that the French striker’s notorious handball in the World Cup play-off against Ireland in Paris was just part and parcel of the game.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” says the former Ireland and Liverpool legend of FIFA’s decision.

“What are you going to do? Every time someone handles a ball do you suspend them? It happens week in, week out, and any footballer who says he wouldn’t have done what Thierry Henry did is a liar. It’s up to the referee and linesman to ensure you don’t get away with it. I don’t blame Thierry Henry at all and I don’t think that he should have got a ban or anything like that. It’s part and parcel of football.”

That said, Whelan sympathises with an Irish team which, partly as a result of the ‘Hand of Gaul’, suffered the ultimate punishment of failure to qualify for the World Cup finals.

“It was very, very tough on the Irish players,” he says. “It will take a long time to get over it but you’ve got to get over it as a professional footballer. But whether you call it cheating or sportsmanship, it happens and it happens everywhere. But, yeah, it must have been difficult for all the players because they’d done so well to get as far as they did. But at the same time, you can’t help looking back on it and thinking that if Robbie Keane or Damien Duff or John O’Shea had scored one of those three chances, we wouldn’t ever have talked about Thierry Henry and we would have been at the World Cup.”

Despite the disappointment, Whelan thinks Ireland, under Giovanni Trapattoni, can look with confidence to the next European Championship qualifying campaign.

“I’m certainly more confident than I was at the start of the World Cup qualifiers,” he says. “Trapattoni’s got a belief and a structure in there now. It’s funny, it’s a bit like when Jack (Charlton) came along and his idea of playing football was to hit it over in the corners and run after it. It wasn’t something you wanted to do but then when you’re getting success from it, you start to say, well, ‘okay, we’ll stick with it’.

“And it’s a bit like that with Trapattoni. He’s got a system in place and it’s not exactly the greatest football you’re going to see in the world – a lot of hard work, a lot of closing down – but they’ve been getting some success with it. Now he’s had a couple of years doing it and with a couple more he can fine-tune it and bring it on from where it is.”

Whelan is much less upbeat about the state of affairs at Anfield. One of the first of the Liverpool old boys to openly criticise manager Rafael Benitez, Whelan has already said he thinks it’s time for the manager to go.

Whelan believes that, at any other club, the Spaniard would have long since been shown the door but, leaving financial issues to one side, he reckons a combination of the American owners soaking up supporters’ ire and the lingering glow of that famous Champions’ League win in Istanbul, means Benitez has survived to become what he calls “a rabbit in the headlights”.

Says the Dubliner: “I think he has lived off Istanbul and you sometimes wonder if the fans who love Rafa are like 15, 16 year olds who saw them win the Champions League, saw them reach another final, saw them win the FA Cup and these are the fans who think Rafa’s great because of what he did four or five years ago. But the older fans will look at the team that they’ve got and know that they’re not good enough.”

Whelan’s immediate solution would be to send again for one of Anfield’s all-time legends, former player and manager Kenny Dalglish.

“People know that Kenny’s been out of the game for a long time but they don’t know that he’s always watching football,” Whelan observes. “He’d probably know more players in Europe than we would. I would say that, if they’re going to get rid of Benitez, give it to Kenny until the end of the season and then look at their options.

“Rafa seems to think that finishing fourth in the league is a tremendous achievement but it’s all they’ve got left now. Liverpool have to be bigger and better than that. Liverpool want to be winning the league.”

* Ronnie Whelan was speaking at a promotion for Ladbroke’s ‘Striker Manager’ offer. For further details see www.ladbrokesstrikermanager.com.