Ireland’s anger at being denied a place at the World Cup finals by a blatant French handball threatened to provoke a diplomatic row yesterday when the prime ministers of both countries became involved.
François Fillon warned Brian Cowen to keep out of the football scandal after the Taoiseach said that he would discuss his call for the Ireland-France match to be replayed with President Sarkozy. Mr Fillon said that neither government should interfere in the decisions of Fifa, world football’s governing body.
While French public opinion turned against the national team, voicing shame over Thierry Henry’s double handball in setting up the crucial goal, in Ireland it was as if the nation were taking a bath in the nostalgia-scented waters of oppression.
Failure to qualify would even affect the struggling economy, it was said. Rueing the missed opportunity, Tara Buckley, who leads a group representing grocers, said: “It would have lifted the gloom and got people spending.”
The pluck of the Irish had come second to “the Hand of Frog”, one Dublin paper said — and the duplicity of Fifa.
So goodbye South Africa, adieu feel-good factor, au revoir economic bounce. And vive le malheur politique.
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They take their sports seriously over there.
mid island mike
Well seriously they did get robbed on that one. But FIFA does not believe in using video replays.
World Cup fever – a disease of hyper nationalists. First there was the match between Egypt and Algeria, with riots in the streets. Now its a dispute that has evolved into a war of words between the French and Irish governments. “Only two things does he (the modern citizen) anxiously wish for ‘bread and circuses’.” Juvenal AD c.60 – c.130. Cheers.