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As if the threatened suspension of Thierry Henry were
not enough, France narrowly lost out to England yesterday for a
place among the seeds at tomorrow’s World Cup draw, claiming that
they were being punished for the Barcelona forward’s indiscretion
against Ireland in the qualification play-off.
England were, as expected, confirmed as one of the eight seeds
after a meeting of the World Cup organising committee yesterday —
meaning that they will avoid being drawn against the true
heavyweights, such as Brazil and Spain, although a worst-case
scenario would still involve them being drawn in the same group as
France, Ivory Coast and the United States. But the process used to
reach that decision, which was based on positions in the Fifa world
rankings in October, has left a sour taste in France.
Henry learnt last night that he was facing a Fifa disciplinary
investigation for his deliberate handball in Paris last month,
which led to the goal by William Gallas that eliminated Ireland,
and the French delegation in Cape Town suspect that the incident
played on the minds of the World Cup organising committee as it
settled on its seedings yesterday.
Speaking on RTL, the French radio station, Michel Hidalgo, the
coach who led Les Bleus to victory at the European Championship in
1984, said: “At the highest level of football, there has to be
comprehensive moral justice — and I don’t know why France isn’t a
top seed. There are sporting regulations that have not been applied
by Fifa. These are exorbitant charges. France were world champions
in 1998 and runners-up in 2006. Who made Argentina top seeds? What
have England done, apart from having a league full of foreign
players?
“I am asking myself if this is not a sanction for the handball
of Henry. It is an injustice. It’s not for me to point a finger,
but it does seem like France is being sanctioned.”
Jérôme Valcke, the Fifa general secretary and a Frenchman,
rejected those allegations. “The October rankings were used because
otherwise it would have given an unfair advantage to the teams who
played in the play-offs [because they played an extra two
competitive matches, which hold more weight in the rankings
table],” he said. “Why, then, should they play more matches and get
more points? Why should we kick out England, who had a very nice
qualifying campaign?”
Fabio Capello, the England manager, will certainly be grateful
that his team did not miss out. While they would have been seeded
using the same criteria as at the 2002 and 2006 finals — where
rankings were used, along with performance at previous tournaments
— there had been fears that a change in policy was likely to take
into account rankings over the previous two-year period. This would
have meant England losing out to France, having fallen to
fourteenth in the rankings after their failure to qualify for the
European Championship finals in 2008.
Jean-Pierre Escalettes, president of the French football
federation, was more diplomatic. “There’s no surprise,” he said. “I
had done my calculations and we only had a very small chance of
figuring in the first pot. It was logical that Fifa would use the
October rankings, which placed us in ninth position. The handball
of Thierry Henry cannot have come into consideration.”
