Ireland blunder ref hammered back in Sweden
Swedish referee Martin Hansson has been condemned in his homeland for missing the France handball which dumped the Republic of Ireland out of next years World Cup.
Hansson's blunder – and Thierry Henry's dishonesty - were the major talking points afterwards but Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet laid the blame squarely at the official's door.
Their story said: "There are approximately 80million Irishmen around the world. We guarantee they all feel pretty bad today.
"But I sincerely hope there are three Swedes that feel even worse.
"They are Martin Hansson and (referee's assistants) Stefan Wittberg and Fredrik Nilsson."
They concluded by adding: "There will be no World Cup for Ireland and I assume that Team Hansson has also forfeited it's right to continue to take charge of major international matches.
"Anything else would be a further insult to the Irish nation."
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Comments (5)
To be fair to the ref, his linesman was in the perfect position and he should have called a handball, so it was more his fault. I think the ref apart from the handball had an excellent game, for example not giving a penalty when Anelka dived.
If france had any national pride they would offer a replay, chances are they would'nt play as bad as they did that night anyway.As an Irishman I feel gutted to go out the way we did,especially when we conceded a deflected goal in the first leg at croke park aswell.
The decision to seed the play offs was an absoloute disgrace in the first place.
The french are forever going to be called cheats wherever they go now.
There will be no replay, but the ref messed it up and needs to acknowledge this. I don't think he should step down, but an apology would be pretty nice. I don't blame him personally, I blame FIFA for rigging the contest in the first place.
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