Mon Jun 20 07:46pm EDT
Thierry Henry scored his eighth goal of the
season in New York’s 3-3 draw against Portland on Sunday, making him the
league’s top scorer (along with Landon Donovan). That was just the set-up for
the joke that was his straight red card in injury time for giving the Timbers’
Adam Moffat a firm pat on the back of the head (35 seconds into the video) out
of frustration. Moffat responded by shoving Henry, but the two quickly seemed to
resolve their dispute before the referee decided that he didn’t like the initial
touches.
Moffat was shown a yellow card and Henry a red for “violent conduct.” Because
those slaps to the back of the melon could’ve given Moffat a headache or
something. Granted, Henry should not have made any kind of aggressive contact
with Moffat’s head, so a yellow for both players could have been justified. The
ref obviously did not agree, though.
After the initial shock of the strangely harsh punishment wore off, Thierry
reacted in Mourinho-esque fashion by shaking hands with his opponents and the
referee before walking away.
Needless to say, New York was not happy with the decision and on Monday,
sporting director Erik Soler ripped into the quality of MLS officiating on the team’s official site:
“We have carefully reviewed the film of our match against Portland last night
and I can safely say that the level of refereeing was absolutely below the
standards of what is required for a MLS match and completely unacceptable.
First, the red card given to Thierry Henry was inexplicable. There was no
violent conduct on his part whatsoever and this decision was made by a linesman
who was more than half a field away. Second, in any soccer game, there is no way
that one team can draw 20 more fouls than the other team, especially in a match
where one team drew just five fouls. I have never seen this occur in my 30 years
in the game.We are aware that U.S. Soccer and MLS are working hard to improve the
officiating in this country and we support those efforts wholeheartedly.
However, if we want to continue increasing the level of play, we cannot let
these types of refereeing performances occur. We look forward to speaking with
the League to appeal Thierry’s automatic red card suspension and expect that it
will be rescinded so that he is available for our match Thursday in
Seattle.”
A poll on MLSsoccer.com shows that more than 85 percent of
readers agree with Soler that a red card for what Henry did was just plain
wrong. But in a season that has already had heavy criticism for the league going
soft on a rash of horror tackles that have caused devastating injuries to some
of its top players, it almost seems to fit the league’s sometimes bizarre logic
that a pat on the head would actually be considered violent conduct and get one
of MLS’s biggest stars an automatic ban.
story from and video at: http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/blog/dirty-tackle/post/Thierry-Henry-red-carded-for-patting-opponent-8?urn=sow-wp2615
——————————————————————————————-
Thierry Henry was born on August 17th, 1977 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Henry
August 17th, 1977
August 17th
8 + 17 +2+0+1+0 = 28 = his personal year (from August 17th, 2010 to August 16th, 2011) = Unstoppable. Hero.
28 year + 6 (June) = 34 = his personal month (from June 17th, 2011 to August 16th, 2011) = Generating a buzz.
numerology behind the news 