From: Hildegaard Beauregard [ljlife@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 12:39 PM
Subject: Re: Referees

So far no one in the press is characterizing the call
on Henry as even controversial. I could be wrong about
it, or partial, myself, but I have not found any
information to enlighten me. They are describing it as
a "two-footed lunge" or an "uncharateristic
over-the-top" foul.

Notice the confusion? Well, that's part of the
confusion I noticed, too. In the run of play, Henry
went for the ball first against one Uruguayan player.
They had body contact, the ball bounded away from
them, and Henry lunged down towards the ball, his foot
arriving there as another Uruguayan's did. I still do
not know which contact he was called for, and as I saw
them and remember them, neither of them merits a red
card, though either could be a foul for a free kick.
As I'm sure you can imagine, there were numerous
incidents throughout the match which WOULD merit a red
card: elbow to the head, lunging tackles directly at
the player and not even intended for the ball, etc.
Most of these were by Uruguayans, and I will not even
say they were more dirty than the French, only that
the red card was arbitrary in the context.

The crowd in Pusan I believe was in agreement about
the unfairness shown towards France. Uruguay's most
demonstrative player, Dario Silva, from his bleached
hairdo to his flopping histrionics, after several
blows to French players worse than Henry's, went down
with an injury. The slow-motion replay, played on the
giant screens for the crowd, showed the contact made
was to a different part of his leg than he clutched in
reaction and as he remained on the ground grimacing.
Silva was taken to the sidelines, continued to limp
around there for a spell, then limped back onto the
pitch. Just moments later, he was not only flying
about, but he took down a French player clean of the
ball -- a flagrant foul which should've at least
resulted in his SECOND yellow card of the match, the
equivalent of a red and ejection. The crowd began to
boo and jeer Silva every time he got the ball, and
they did so when he walked off to be substituted. I'm
sure the response was from a lot of French fans, but
it also seemed loud enough to have a good portion of
the Korean crowd behind it.

The French played on valiantly, and to the credit of
Uruguay, their coach called the preponderance of the
evidence:

"It was a fair result," Pua said. "Because of their
quality, France with 10 men were able to cover for the
loss of one player."

They just weren't able to score.