{"id":1262,"date":"2009-11-23T10:10:16","date_gmt":"2009-11-23T16:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=1262"},"modified":"2009-11-23T10:46:55","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T16:46:55","slug":"federer-supports-henry-in-handball-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/federer-supports-henry-in-handball-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Federer supports Henry in Handball controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1285\" title=\"ITALY TENNIS\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/federer-and-henry1.jpg\" alt=\"ITALY TENNIS\" width=\"400\" height=\"200\" \/>Wimbledon champion Roger Federer insists his friend Thierry Henry shouldn&#8217;t be blamed for the controversial goal that sent France to the World Cup at the Republic of Ireland&#8217;s expense.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Henry has come in for heavy criticism after he clearly controlled a cross with his arm before setting up William Gallas to score the goal that gave France the 1-1 draw they needed to see off Ireland in Wednesday&#8217;s World Cup play-off second leg in Paris.<\/p>\n<p>The incident has been compared to the infamous &#8216;hand of god&#8217; goal scored by Argentina&#8217;s Diego Maradona against England in the 1986 World Cup, while the Irish FA has called on FIFA, world football&#8217;s governing body, to make France replay the game.<\/p>\n<p>With Henry&#8217;s reputation in danger of being severely tarnished by the incident, the Barcelona star can at least rely on the support of tennis&#8217;s world number one.<\/p>\n<p>Federer has struck up a firm friendship with Henry since the pair shot high-profile commercials with Tiger Woods for shaving company Gillette and the Swiss star said: &#8220;It (the handball) happened in a split second. You can&#8217;t blame him for playing on.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the referee doesn&#8217;t see it I just think it is the systems and the referee who are at fault.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It has happened so many times. So many goals are given that weren&#8217;t goals. This is just one more.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Is the criticism strong? That is because we are here in Britain. It doesn&#8217;t sound like that in France I think.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>France captain Henry moved to quell the storm by admitting in a statement on Friday that a replay would be &#8220;the fairest solution&#8221;, but such an outcome remains unlikely.<\/p>\n<p>And Federer concedes that no amount of apologies will make some people forgive Henry now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He did apologise. People say it was only after the match, but even five seconds after the event is too late,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wimbledon champion Roger Federer insists his friend Thierry Henry shouldn&#8217;t be blamed for the controversial goal that sent France to the World Cup at the Republic of Ireland&#8217;s expense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,154],"tags":[319,2029,2019,2021,2026,2030,2028,2020,2022,2024,2018,2023,2025,379,2027],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport","category-tennis","tag-argentina","tag-diego-maradona","tag-federer","tag-federer-henry","tag-france-ireland","tag-gillette","tag-hand-of-god","tag-henry","tag-henry-handball","tag-republic-of-ireland","tag-roger-federer","tag-thierry-henry","tag-william-gallas","tag-world-cup-fifa","tag-world-cup-play-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}