Five Hours that Shook the World
It’s been a few days now, so I thought it might be time to have a more measured look back at Wednesday’s games. As I hope to prove in the opus that follows, it was a truly incredible day for world football. The only shame, the only f****n disgrace, if you will, would be if we only remember November 18, 2009 for the Henry incident.
It all began at precisely 12:32 p.m. ET, when the action kicked off in Khartoum. The final whistle at the Stade de France, just outside Paris, was sounded at 5:32 p.m. ET. Five hours…
In a statement released yesterday morning, Thierry Henry again admitted that his handball was responsible for setting up the decisive goal in Wednesday’s play-off against the Republic of Ireland. Henry went on to reject claims that he was a “cheat” and said that he agreed that the “fairest solution” would be to replay the match. Conveniently or not, FIfa had denied that exact request, as submitted by the Irish, earlier in the day.
The talk of shame
The result would stand as it was played. Ireland are out. The French are headed to South Africa for this summer’s World Cup. Quoteth Roy Keane: “Get over it.”
Henry’s handball, the feign that launched a thousand tabloid quips, may have led Wednesday night’s sports news, but in truth it was just one of many earth-shaking moments in a five-hour span of international soccer that unfolded like a history lesson woven into an epic morality play. From the Sudanese capital, which played neutral host to Egypt and Algeria, to Celje, Slovenia, a country borne of the former Yugoslavia, where the national team took on a heavily-favored, heavily-funded Russian side, the past and future of three continents collided on five small green fields. Eleven players aside, one referee, and positively hundreds of millions of people hanging on every kick.
These became obsolete about an hour before kick-off
The first of the afternoon came at least five hours after Sudan’s Al-Merreikh stadium was opened to ticketed fans. The elaborate caravansary, not to mention 15,000 police promised to guard the facility and supporters, were in shambles by early morning. There is considerable evidence—it’s as clear as day on YouTube—that at least one fan made it inside with some sort of flame-throwing device. Fifa’s decision to play the game in the Sudanese capital, home to President Omar al-Bashir and just hours away from Darfur’s killing fields, was looking dubious early. The morality had been in question for days.
Egypt and Algeria had finished even-up in their African qualifying group after the Egyptians, current champions of Africa, won the final scheduled game 2-0, Saturday in Cairo. That match had nearly been suspended before it began after a group of local lunatics decided to stone the Algerian bus, leaving its floor stained with players’ blood. Egypt denied anything happened at all. They have since recalled their envoy in Algiers.
The opening minutes on the field were only slightly less vicious. The referee gave his first caution just a minute into the match. There would be two more before halftime and three more after. Scoring chances would be more scarce. It took 39 minutes of vicious tackling and end-to-end play before Anthar Yahia, the Algerian central defender, put his team ahead 1-0 with a masterful volley that touched the crossbar before hitting the back of the net.
Ten minutes earlier in Donetsk, Ukraine, the hosts began their match with Greece. The teams had played a dull 0-0 draw in the first leg Saturday, so like in Sudan, one goal would probably be enough to book a ticket to the first African World Cup finals.
At just before 10 p.m. local time in Khartoum, Algerian goal scorer Yahia was pulled off for Samir Zaovi. Yahia, a 27-year-old who plays his professional soccer for the Bundesliga’s VfL Bochum, was just more than twenty minutes from the glory of having struck his nation into the World Cup.
Yahia in his day job
Egypt, of course, threw its ranks forward as the Algerians settled in to defend the slight margin. As time ran down, Egypt was whistled one last time for offside. At half past ten o’clock in evening, the final whistle came and with it a roar 24 years in the making. For the first time since Mexico in 1986, Algeria was going to the World Cup. They will be the only Arab nation in South Africa.
With the football score settled in Khartoum (the alleged violence afterward has set off protests and a further diplomatic row), it was nearly time for kickoff in Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Both teams were set for crunch battles with better established sides. Slovenia was hosting Russia, a developing soccer power backed by the cash of oligarchs like Roman Abramovich. Russia had won the first leg 2-1, in Moscow. They were favored to finish the job at Celje’s Petrol Arena.
As the Algerian team climbed the goalposts at the Al-Merreikh, the Greeks were on the verge of an upset of their own. A 31st minute goal from Dimitrios Salpigidis had put them ahead of Ukraine 1-0 on aggregate. Now, as they had done with such success in winning the 2004 European Championship, Greece was buckling down. They would hold on, earning their spot as the 28th team to qualify for South Africa.
One down, one to go for Algeria and France's finest
With Slovenia and Russia underway and the Bosnia-Herzegovina tilt with Portugal also begun, the time had come for kickoff at the Stade de France in the Parisian suburb of saint-Denis. In the stands to watch were President Nicolas Sarkozy and, sitting in a special section, France’s finest player of at least the past two decades, one Zinedane Zidane. Zizou had to have known that Algeria, his parents’ home before emigrating to the slums of Marseille, had defied the odds and defeated the Pharaohs. (He might have been tipped off by the giant Algerian flag flowing in the upper tier of the stadium. It was a moment only world football could provide.)
France and Ireland, like the rest of the European teams playing Wednesday, had engaged in a first leg a week ago. The French had won that game, 1-0. By 9:01 p.m. local time, they needed only a draw to ensure their place in the World Cup.
Over the next sixty-six minutes there would be three goals scored in three different stadiums. The first, by Zlatko Dedic in Celje, put Slovenia 1-0 up on Russia. The teams were now even (2-2) on aggregate, but Slovenia, even in losing 2-1 in Moscow, took the advantage in away goals. Could they possibly tame the Russian bear? Meanwhile, back in France, the Irish had done it, they had leveled the overall score with France as Damien Duff fed captain Robbie Keane, who coolly slotted home from just yards outside the French goal. Ireland and France were all even, and would stay that way as the game progressed and a nervous pall began to settle over Saint-Denis.
There was no similar cause for concern in Portugal. Their national team, which beat the Bosnians 1-0 in Lisbon, had gone ahead by the same score line in Sarajevo. Bosnia-Herzegovina would not join Serbia in the World Cup.
The best manager money can buy
Slovenia’s fate was still in the balance. Russia were down to ten outfield players (a dubious red card saw Alexander Kerzhakov sent off) and less than a half-hour to salvage their newfangled World Cup dream. The deep pockets of at least one expat Oligarch had purchased for the team a brilliant coach in the Dutchman Guus Hiddink. Hiddink had led hosts South Korea to the semi-final match at the 2002 World Cup and taken upstart Australia to the brink against eventual champions Italy four years later. In last year’s European championship, Hiddink’s Russia had played brilliantly, losing in the semifinal but establishing the team as a real threat to take home the big trophy in 2010.
But there they stood, down 1-0, an elaborate dream of new Russian glory dying a slow, simple death as the Slovenians, once themselves hidden behind the Soviet Iron Curtain, made no mistakes and assured their place on world sport’s center stage. Just three minutes before the Portuguese would seal it in Sarajevo, Slovenia became the 29th nation to qualify.
The tiny Balkan nation is just 11 years old
With Algeria, Greece, Slovenia, and Portugal having done the job, all the eyes of Europe had turned to the Estade de France.
The match would stay 1-0 to the Irish as regular time drew to a close. The French players were noticeably flagging as the extra thirty minutes began. Still, neither side could muster any real chances and so, with about 13 minutes gone, the French lined up for a speculative free kick from just inside the Irish half. The ball was put heavy in the direction of goal, though it appeared destined to skip wide of net and out of bounds.
There, but for the “Hand Gaul” it would have ended. Instead, whether you want to call it cheating, or just an instinctive but illegal act that somehow eluded the officials on the field, French superstar Thierry Henry entered the pantheon of sporting controversy. In the Irish pubs across New York City his old Gooner red number 14 shirt will never wear quite as well. As Telegraph football columnist Henry Winter, never a man to use the same word twice, tweeted in the moments after the game ended in France, “Why Thierry? Why ruin your reputation for sportsmanship? Journalists are now running thru Stade de Fraud looking for you. Why did you cheat?”
A day in the life
Comments
I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He held the ball inside the box
The ref notice that the game had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They’d seen his face before
Nobody was really sure
If he had all of his referee’s badges.
I saw a film today oh boy
The Irish Football had just lost the match
A crowd of people turned away
but I just had to look
Having read the book
I’d love to turn you on
Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke,
and Somebody spoke and I went into a dream
I read the news today oh boy
One silly goal in the Stade du France
And though the goal was rather small
They had to count it all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill South
Africa.
I’d love to turn you on
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
never could see any other way…
Keith: that was an impressive way to waste some time. Nicely done.
Totti w/ a hattie before the 30-min. mark.
I see how this works. Rovers get the early Sunday game, and noone at UF gets Bootroom duty? Or sleeps through it?
Am I the only one who thinks that Bayern Munich’s Louis van Gaal looks remarkably like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?
Gavin McCann – shave your head, man!
We are totally bossing this game right now. Bolton equalizer against the run of play practically guaranteed…
absolutely shambolic OG puts Rovers up 2-0!!
A Defoe hat trick has made it moot, but Scharner just pulled an Henry special, controlling with the hand, knocking it to his feet, and scoring, and the referee let it go.
BTW, Defoe’s hat trick is pretty special: 3 goals in ~4 minutes
From the Guardian’s live-text of Stoke-Pompey: “22 min: In the match Sky are not broadcasting Jermaine Defoe has just scored a seven-minute hat-trick. Back at the Britannia Aruna Dindane just ran into the corner and fell over.”
(And welcome back, Aaron Lennon.)
Pardon me, I misspoke. 4 goals in ~7 minutes. Not so special as before, but still quite a flurry.
3 goals in 7 minutes. WTF is wrong with me today?
5-1. At this rate we may catch up to Arsenal on goal diff. by the end. :D
So um yeah, I’m kind of worried about this Spurs team.
AZZA!!!!!! Lennon has really come into his own this season.
NICE, another one for Defoe.
This Stoke-Pompey game is like a clinic in how not to play football. Unbelievably bad, lazy play…
JERMAIN DEFOE! HE’S A YIDDO!!!
JERMAIN DEFOE! HE’S A YIDDO!!!
Ryan, I think you should be worried more about your City team.
/shit-talk
Hell of a game for Lennon. Good to see him back.
Rodallega just stamped the living shit out of Palacios, and there’s no whistle. He ought to be sent off. That a Scharner’s handball are really the only two blemishes on these officials, though. They’ve been quite good.
FIVE FOR DEFOE!!!!
DEFOE!
LOLOL. Not done yet!
HE SCORED THAT GOAL AGAINST THE SCUM
BENTLEY, BENTLEY
FROM FORTY YARDS HE BEAT ALMUNIA
BENTLEY, BENTLEY
WE ALWAYS KNEW HE WAS A YID
EVEN WHEN HE WAS WEARING RED
HE’S DAVID BENTLEY
TOTTENHAM’S NUMER 5!!!
NIKO!!!!!!!!!!
NINE FUCKING GOALS!
NINE!!
What a fucking fantastic game.
That was fun.
GOOD LORD WHAT IS HAPPENING IN YOUR KITCHEN
Even better when you consider that the score should’ve been 9-0, what w/ the handball on the Wigan goal.
What a great fucking day this is
Stoke booed off the pitch by their own fans at the half
I knew we’d have a hard time breaking down Wigan without Keane
I could eat an entire cake in the time it takes Rory Delap to make a throw.
According to the BBC Alan Shearer & Andy Cole are the only other players ever to score 5 in a Premier League match.
And the Stoke-Pompey live text on the Guardian is priceless. The cat video makes me laugh.
holy shit, what a scoreline. so sad to have missed seeing that game.
@steve being shown at 5 et on fsc
Fellow I know was at The Lane today, and after Scharner’s handball goal was allowed, the fans began singing “Are You Henry In Disguise?”
thanks, TLL. watching it now.
Its still funny even after a couple of days.
And I looked up that Ireland-Georgia game Keane was referring to on Youtube and that PK was a total joke.
Im neither a Scientologist or a My Name Is Earl fan but that Henry hand was karma biting the irish on the ass for that phantom PK they got in Georgia.
[...] In a statement released yesterday morning, Thierry Henry again admitted that his handball was responsible for setting up the decisive goal in Wednesday’s play-off against the Republic of Ireland. Henry went on to reject claims that he was a ….. The cat video makes me laugh. On November 22, 2009 @ 12:57 Steve says: holy shit, what a scoreline. so sad to have missed seeing that game. On November 22, 2009 @ 15:28 The Likely Lad says: @steve being shown at 5 et on fsc …Continue Reading… [...]