Le Main De Dieu: Henry Hands France Ticket To The World Cup

A hand ball has not been this controversial since Diego Maradona's hand ball against England in 1986!

As a huge soccer fan, i must say that the past week or so, soccer has been getting some very negative and controversial news. Non more controversial than Thiery Henry's illegal hand ball against Ireland recently. France hosted Ireland at Le Stad De France in paris, this game was a world cup qualification game in which Ireland needed to win to get thru to the world cup in South Africa in 2010. This was a do or die game for France and Ireland!!!! High stakes game to say the least!!!
Ireland was winning 1-0 until Theiry Henry illegally used his hand to control the ball and sends in a cross and assisted Gallas' goal to tie the game!! The tie was enough to send France to the World Cup and Ireland's world cup dreams chattered by a moment of dishonesty by Henry and a major fuck up by the referees.
I ask, where were the referees????!!!! Where is the video camera evidence for such an important game???? Why aren't there referees standing behind each goal to help the center referee make these huge game changing decisions?????!!
Henry is a tremendous soccer player, one of the best strikers of modern soccer but this incident will surely change people's opinion of him! In all honesty, i do not blame henry for this. I BLAME FIFA and failure to introduce 2009 technology to the game!! This game is the most popular game on the planet, people get killed over a game of soccer! Referees get threatened if not assaulted or killed over a bad call!! FIFA needs technology to monitor players on and off the ball! What the hell are they waiting for???? Henry is a man i would not want to be today. This man's life in danger over this incident and he is not sleeping at night.
Many people who did not grow up playing soccer in other countries(like i did) don't understand the intensity of this game. Soccer unlike many other sports, ithas a very intense fan base. Soccer is life for many many people! In many poor countries, soccer is their outlet from poverty. Professional soccer players is what they aspire to be to get themselves and their families out of the ghettos. Many do not even go to school because their parents prefer they play the game all day on the streets in hope of becoming professional players. It's a passion for the game, not seen in any other sport. It is the most followed, the played, the most watched and most popular sport in the world and with it comes the super intensity of fans and followers.
Soccer has it's ugly side as well:

Go to facebook and search for: "we irish hate thierry henry(the cheat)" and you will see one example of what i am talking about. Soccer is intense!

In Henry's defense i will say this: He is a footballer and he did what comes instinctively to him, he handled the ball instinctively! If you played soccer or are a serious soccer player, then chances are YOU did the same thing at some point during a game. Happens all the time!

I do not blame henry. I blame FIFA and their decisions on how they decide to govern the beautiful game. FIFA needs to apologize to the fellow Irish and give them a rematch against France and reform soccer refereeing along the way!! I call for keeping the 3 referee system but also adding 2 more refs, one behind each goal and that will surely make room for much less errors! Also, introduce video technology for important games!! This needs to happen ASAP!

For me, all i want to do is kick the ball around and get out there and compete over a good fair of football! It's the only thing that consistently puts a genuine childlike smile on my face since i was 5 years old!!

It's the beautiful game and always will be.