Did Thierry Henry cheat? Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.

Were Ireland cheated out of a spot in the World Cup finals?  Yes . . . but, there was still time left in the match . . . so . . .

Do I believe Henry when he says “it was an instinctive reaction”? Yes.

I have said at the time and I will say again that yes I handled the ball. I am not a cheat and never have been. It was an instinctive reaction to a ball that was coming extremely fast in a crowded penalty area.

As a footballer you do not have the luxury of the television to slow the pace of the ball down 100 times to be able to make a conscious decision. People are viewing a slow motion version of what happened and not what I or any other footballer faces in the game.

If people look at it in full speed you will see that it was an instinctive reaction. It is impossible to be anything other than that. I have never denied that the ball was controlled with my hand. I told the Irish players, the referee and the media this after the game.

Does he deserve to get kicked out of football—my heated recommendation on Wednesday? No.

I agree with Arsene Wenger who says the problem is “above Thierry Henry”:

Thierry Henry was the big loser in this story. If he had come out [at the time] and said it was handball, half of France would have said, ‘how crazy is he, not to get us to the World Cup?’ If he doesn’t say it straight away, he is also guilty. The problem is not Thierry Henry, it is above Thierry Henry. . . .

Football and sport in general is full of heroes who have cheated ten times more than Thierry. For me people who bought referees, who took drugs, they are the real cheats in sport. Thierry Henry has years of fair behaviour behind him and he today is singled out in the wrong way. . . .

What is terrible for the referee is that he gave the goal knowing something was not regular, yet he had no help. I saw him walk from the linesman to the middle of the park, thinking ‘I have to give that goal’, knowing it is not a regular goal. That is where football is guilty. . . .

The biggest anger for me is that we are still in 2009, sitting here where millions of people see what happened, one guy doesn’t see it and we can’t help him. Football is the most popular sport in the world and we are still having to endure these kinds of mistakes.’

I think there’s little doubt that the Hand of Gaul will issue in the age of video technology to the beautiful game. My biggest fear is that it’s going to be abused.

And speaking of buying referees, Arsene:

A match-fixing ring with more than 200 suspected members fixed or attempted to fix dozens of matches across Europe, including three in the Champions League, German police said on Friday.

No, this hasn’t been a good week for the beautiful game.

Human nature ruins everything it touches.