Thierry Henry & Losing to the French Again

As a Manchester United supporter, I’ve never been too keen on Thierry Henry. Back in the days just before the billionaires starting buying up clubs, United and Arsenal were the two top dogs, and Henry was so ridiculously good that Arsenal were the top club in English football for a time.

The thing was, as much as I didn’t like the fact that Henry was scoring for Arsenal every week and winning them trophies, I had nothing but respect for the guy. He didn’t come across as too cocky (perhaps a little, but nowhere near Ronaldo levels), he wasn’t your typical ‘at the end of the day, it’s a game of two halves and the boys done well’ character in the interviews and his ‘Va Va Voom’ adverts were terrifically self-aggrandising in a jokey way.

Once he left London French and joined Barcelona, I was delighted. It wasn’t okay to like Henry per se, but pretending to hate him to everyone was something I no longer had to do, and I could admire his football. His continued devotion to Arsenal, even after he had left, was also great to see. He spoke about how he will one day return to Arsenal because it feels like home to him. As everybody is saying these days, that kind of loyalty is becoming rarer and rarer (some players don’t even want to play for their own country – gasp – Stephen who?).

All of this makes Thierry Henry’s cheating, yes cheating it could only have been intentional, in the World Cup Playoff last night all the more painful and difficult to take.

If we were going to be cheated out of qualification, why could it not have been one of the villains of the French team? William Gallas, the scorer of the goal, is not so much the villain in this case. Why could he not have been the guilty culprit? I haven’t had much respect for him since his temper tantrum after Arsenal conceded a last-minute penalty, and he proceeded to kick the advertising boards in a fit of bratishness – what a captain.

Being robbed by somebody seemingly so nice is, well, it feels even worse than being robbed by someone you would suspect or dislike. After Neil Back cheated Munster in the Heineken Cup, there was anger, but it wasn’t as if Irish fans had much respect for Back anyway. It’s the fact that ‘nice-guy’ Henry has robbed us that really irks the most.

Us – Ireland, The Republic, The Boys in Green. Another generation of kids will now never feel the magic and national cohesion that a World Cup brings. I remember 1994 (too young for 1990) - the flags, the shouting, the shameless self-promotion of Eamonn Dunphy, Ray Houghton scoring a cracker against Italy. It was brilliant. I will always hold cherished childhood memories that I’ll never forget (France didn’t qualify for 1994 World Cup, incidentally). I remember 2002 – Getting up early to travel to Stillorgan and watch the games with a few hundred other Irish fans, the flags, the chants, the shameless self-promotion of Eamonn Dunphy, arguing over Roy Keane and Mattie Holland scoring a cracker against the Cameroon.

How many French kids are as passionate as we are about our sport? When have travelling French supporters been a highlight of a tournament? Irish fans have done it all over the world; Italy, the USA, Japan and South Korea, the Caribbean (Cricket World Cup). Not having us in South Africa is going to greatly diminish the tournament, in my biased eyes.

Recently, it feels like it’s always the French though doesn’t it?

Croke Park 2007. In the first ever game of rugby to be played on the GAA’s hallowed turf, we play the French. They score a last-minute try, and we lose by three points. That was painful. We bounced back by destroying England 43-13 in Croker a few weeks later, but that try cost us the Grand Slam that year.
The whole Rugby World Cup later that year was worse. Seen as France’s main rivals in the early stages, the French media went after Eddie O’Sullivan and Ronan O’Gara. The result was us playing worse than we did in the 90’s and an easy French victory.

Yet still, last night was the most painful blow of all. In both of the rugby instances, we had the players and the talent to do something about it, but we were caught sleeping, or just played awfully for a whole tournament. This is completely unjust, completely unfair.

We were the better team against them across the 210 minutes of football. It may have gone to penalties, maybe they would have scored anyway, but we will never know. It is the most painful of all the French defeats because we were cheated out of the biggest tournament in the world, our fragile national mood was shattered once again and the man responsible is the seemingly lovely bloke, Thierry Henry.

I don’t think he will be visiting Ireland anytime soon.