So it turns out that in 2010 the Irish FA received financial compensation from FIFA in return for not going to court against FIFA over Thierry Henrys "hand of frog" moment that prevented Ireland from qualifying for the 2010 world cup. John Delaney confirms that FIFA paid FAI €5 million in 2009 after the Thierry Henry handball so they wouldn't proceed with a legal case.— Daniel McDonnell (@McDonnellDan) June 4, 2015 And it was revealed by a tabloid a year earlier, but not officialy confirmed until now. John Delaney confirming a story broken by @gmeneely in the @IrishSunOnline a year ago. #FAI #YBIG #Blatter pic.twitter.com/42LYGwnD1Z— Mark May (@Mayzer5) June 4, 2015 I think it is fair to say that anyone within a 20 mile radious arround Roy Keane should run for their lives before he finds out about this. Sidenote: Irish FA chief executive also had some rather seedy things to say about Sepp Blatter in his interview: “He met Emma, my partner, in Vienna recently,” said Delaney. “He stared at her for seven or eight seconds and he said, “I approve of your new girlfriend’”. I asked him to move on, move on please.” So I think that with the recent reveleations and arrests there will be alot of these also poping up again. Now that the full scale of 20 years of corruption are being revealed, every single little controversy that ever happend during a world cup match will have it`s tombstone smashed so it can rear it`s ugly head. And i say "good". Because we should examine those rotten corpses as good as we can. Not just to potentialy find something, but to also avaoid framing people who could very well be inocent. Remember the french referee during the 2010 match between Ivory Coast and Brazil? Alot of people claimed he was bribed, I think he just made rather stupid mistakes. There really only are two things that I am very kean on revisiting and examening closer. And those would be the infamous South Korea vs Italy and South Korea vs Spain matches at the 2002 world cup. FIFA big shots are already being investigated, so taking a closer look at the Ecuadorian referee of the Italy match (who was later suspended for match fixing in Ecuador and found guilty of smuggling heroin) and snooping arround for suspicious payments in his accounts wont hurt. Concerning the Spain match, the linesman at that game was Michael Ragoonath from Trinidad and Tobago, who was brought to that world cup by our beloved mister Jack Warner. Now... I have to admit that being associated with Jack Warner these days will probably mean that you will be found to be guilty by the mob no matter the facts. But I do believe, that especialy considering the doggy match and the horrible decisions by that linesman (h disallowed the Spanish goals) an investigation into him would be justified, aswell as checking his account for suspitious transactions involving Jack Warner. I know that there are still alot of people in Italy and Spain who are still very very bitter over this. So I hope this issue can be brought to rest. With the reveleation of corruption, which controversial moments in world cup football do you think should be revisited?
Not sure I want to see every little on field instance of corruption revisited. I mean I know we need to ensure it stops happening going forward, and I know it would be nice to see any past instances punished (and God knows they should be used against the perpetrators). But man will going back like that really undermine the World Cup even further than the scandal already has. I mean if we go back and find questionable calls left and right that affected game outcomes and find out they really were crooked (which has already started with the Irish revelation about the Henry), then it calls into question not only game results, but by extension the Cups themselves. Possibly to the point of rendering years of World Cup's meaningless or at best * worthy. Which frankly would just be sad.
After the 2002 Salt lake city corruption scandal the Canadian lawyer Dick Pound was handed the job of cleaning up the IOC. He did a thorough job, purging much of the IOC of various corrupted elements, but he didn`t go far enought. His investigation should have gone far back to 1980 when Samaranch took over the IOC and turned it into a corrupted cesspit. Dont get me wrong, the IOC got cleaned up very well. But people who shouldnt be involved in sports in any possible way are still arround. The exposed fraud Peter Hagitey worked for Londons 2012 Olympic bid and the FIFA bribe manager and former ISL boss Jean Marie Weber worked for the Rio 2016 bid that was lead by the notorious Havelange. Nothing has been proven conerning these two people besides that Peter Hagitey got an unusualy high amount of cash by the bid comitee, at least very unusual for a supposed "advisor". As a result, the IOC is much cleaner and takes things like doping and corruption more serious. But because older generations of corrupted executives havent been saught after, their stench still pisons things. With the involvement of Peter Hagitey (was also was involved in the 2022 Australia bid and should be investigated) Havelange and Jean Marie Weber in bids I cant say that the IOC bidding has been cleaned of corruption. FIFA is a through and through corrupted structure. As such it needs a total purge that cleans up every single piece of muck. I dont mind if one of the world cups falls out because of this, as long as it brings us a clean FIFA and a clean world cup. Yeah. i would understand investigating that to.
I've promised to post about this play only once a year, so here's my one time for 2015. Torsten Frings has his hand away from his body and then brings it close to his body to block the ball from going in the goal. Correct call, from my perspective: red card and penalty. Note that many reasonable people disagree with me, and see this as ball-to-hand rather than hand-to-ball. There's no reason to see this no-call as evidence of corruption, of course; it was a bang-bang play and plenty of reasonable people even with the benefit of replay agree with the no-call.
I always felt it was an obvious missed call, primarily based upon my own playing experiences on a post or goal line. He sold it reasonably well, but it was the obvious way in which a back would mask handling the ball: back of hand, arm out a bit, arm adjusting position subtly, leaning with hip to close a bit of the space. I've done it the exact same thing. I don't think it was a corrupt decision though. Just a difficult one to make in real time.
As someone with a Chilean father, my dad always says Chile gets robbed when they lose dating back to 1974. But obviously I can only remember 1998, 2010 and 2014.