Cheating Henry ‘a victim’ in Hand of Gaul furore

He may have become public enemy number one after his sleight of hand denied the Republic of Ireland a place in the 2010 World Cup but a new biography of Thierry Henry argues the Frenchman was as much a victim of the incident as the Boys in Green.

Henry’s infamous handball to tee up William Gallas for the goal was a devastating moment for players who were then arguably at their peak under Giovanni Trapattoni. However France Football correspondent Philippe Auclair argues in his new biography of Henry that the villain of the piece suffered too.

“It was a moment of injustice: injustice towards a fine, superbly organised and combative Irish side for whom qualification would have been fair reward, but injustice, too, towards a magnificent player whose previous on-field behaviour had been almost blameless, and who was vilified to such an extravagant degree that he found himself turned into a figure of hate, even in his own country, for a ‘crime’ he had the courage to confess almost immediately after he had committed it,” Auclair writes in Lonely at the Top.