If ever there was compelling evidence that the law is an ass it is this….
Article 77a of FIFA Disciplinary Code states that the disciplinary committee is responsible for “sanctioning serious infringements which have escaped the match officials’ attention”. Henry’s handball clearly escaped the attention of Hansson and his assistants, yet it could not be described as “serious” – a term which is defined in Article 47 of the code and which incidentally covers handballs intended to prevent a goal, but not those involved in creating one.Hence Henry gets off scott free and FIFA’s official statement on the issue reads..
“The disciplinary committee reached the conclusion that there was no legal foundation for the committee to consider the case because handling the ball cannot be regarded as a serious infringement as stipulated in article 77a of the Fifa disciplinary code. There is no other legal text that would allow the committee to impose sanctions for any incidents missed by match officials.”
In brief.
a] Henry did something wrong
b] There is no law in the FIFA rule book covering what he did.
c] FIFA can’t punish him because he didn’t break any law.
d] Players can do what he did as long as they can get away with it.
The chuckling sound you can hear in the background is Maradona .
One comment on “The FIFA verdict on the Henry handball….”
in reality, i dont think that henry needed to be punished, at the end he did a foul and it was soccer system that could not detect it.
this punishment, if detected by the ref, might worth a yellow card.
now, if he did this exact foul, and the ref could not see it, why should he get more than a yellow?
similarely, many players score a goal while it should be a foul, or a defender gets away without getting a penalty at crucial time.
even if Henry got a punishment (let’s say sent off for three games) like Zizou Headbutt punishment, it is still worth it if it meant going to the WC.
however, FIFA was very passive in terms of tackling the real issue, we all know it “Video Replays”.
When 1978 faced with big fixing scandal doubt (Argentina vs. Peru) and 1982 WC witnessed a very clear fixing incident (Germany Austria), FIFA reacted very positively by fixing the time of last group games. It resulted in a revolution in the world of football.
Also, when soccer started to face really too much defensive tactics, they did a great change in the soccer rules: keeper does not carry the ball by his hand if he got it from a defender, that was in 1992.
Both great changes were during Havelang presidency. I am afriad that (since 1998) Platter didn’t introduce much change to the game.
It worth saying that I was very happy that he removed the golden goal rule which I always thought one of worst ideas of football.
But, nothing else worth appreciating.
Should we wait for the next prisdent to hope for the video replay? may be in 2014 wc?
Or can this rule by introduced by UEFA? can’t they do it in champion league?