Football Refereeing and the Remainder of Thierry Henry
It's de rigueur to say that Thierry Henry's reputation -- as a sleek, sweet, sophisticated sportsman who floated somewhere slightly above mere mortaldom -- is in permanent tatters after his double handball against Ireland. (It's in fact de rigueur to reach for French phrases to describe Henry's crime.) Some now argue he never fully deserved the adulation, as the Guardian's Richard Williams seems to imply ("Henry was a hopeless captain at Arsenal and he is a hopeless captain of France"). Easier still is positing that such a knightly mein was impossible to live up to all along. (I grew up watching Robin Yount, who played 21 years without a dent in his persona, living in a modest rambler about a mile from my parents for that entire time in Milwaukee -- in retrospect this all seems miraculous). Certainly, Henry should have called a foul on himself instead of running off to celebrate -- there is rare precedent, as Williams points out. He is deservedly a leper in the football world, outside of the odd defense by Roy Keane. It will be interesting to see how Barcelona -- the city, the fans -- react to him now, some of the only fans in the world who deify beautiful losing (and fetishize justice) over winning at all costs.
What's really interesting to me, though, is that these five seconds seem to have destroyed Henry as Henry. One can hardly think of him now -- can hardly imagine him at all. He was all about high style, and this incident was a felony against that style, and it is now as if he is a word in the dictionary without a definition. It is the precise opposite of Maradona, for whom the Hand of God seemed retrospectively (and growingly retrospectively) in character. It is difficult to think about taking any pleasure in watching him slidestep his defender to sleep down the touchline before striking like a cobra, impossible to imagine chuckling at that outstretched hand gesture (so very French) he makes when he's been wronged by a non-call. What remains of Thierry Henry now? He will slink off to New York now, kind of like a louche comedian settling in for a years-long run in Branson, instead of coming in as a savior and a king. The worst part is that none of this now seems like a tragedy -- as if he doesn't even deserve that far a fall. One other thing in the wake of l'affaire Henry: Yes, the game needs replay, but why isn't anyone talking about how structurally bad football referreeing is? How you can't possibly police a game with 22 players with only four officials -- only three of whom are on or near the pitch? I've only been watching this game intently for a year now, but it is clearly the worst-officiated major sport in the world, obviously too big and fast for all but a handful of the people who watch over it. Instead, football culture romanticizes bad calls -- they become more legendary than players or teams. (Image credit: atomicShed/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)
