"Replay the game every year for the next century and each time it will need special circumstances for Ireland to win. In 15 matches, they have beaten France twice and the last occasion was 28 years ago. So there can be no consolation for Ireland this time. "The demand that the match should be replayed is forlorn, too. How would that work anyway? Do we stick to the same teams to perfectly recreate the game of that night. If so, how long do we wait for Julien Escude, the French centre half injured in a collision with Patrice Evra? Without the same starting 22 it is not the same game. Yes, FIFA could grant dispensation, make this a special circumstance, but then on what grounds would they reject Russia’s request for a similar revisiting of the match in Slovenia, because the dismissal of striker Alexander Kerzhakov, just 21 minutes after coming on as a substitute, looked harsh? "Indeed, on what grounds would they ignore the two dozen demands for replays in every round of World Cup matches? Some of us would like to get home from South Africa next summer. No, the solution is not to rewrite the rulebook midway through the competition, but to work to minimise the chance of this happening again.A predictable call for the use of video technology has resulted, but that is not the answer, either. The conundrum with video interruptions is how to restart fairly from open play."

"Irish football is entitled to believe it has never seen anything so cynical, so far removed from the spirit of sport, as the devilish hand played by Thierry Henry to deny Giovanni Trapattoni's team a place in the World Cup finals that would have been so thoroughly deserved. But then how do you draw up a ranking table of deceit when you know how far, how sickeningly, the list of precedents for Henry's action stretches back – and how feeble has been the reaction of the authorities? "England will never forget Diego Maradona's "Hand of God" in Mexico in 1986 and Spain, who would be crowned as brilliant European Champions two years later, also have reason to reflect on a level of deceit that even now, three years after it happened in the last World Cup, makes the blood run cold and the senses revolt. "This was also authored by the supremely elegant Henry, the player who for so many and for so long had been among the football angels for his exquisite talent and his philosophical panache. Remember how it led to France's all-important second goal in the second-round match against Spain in Hanover, when Henry fell to the ground faking a head injury after a brush with defender Carlos Puyol? Henry won a decisive free-kick – and the less enviable reward of announcing himself a specialist cheat."

"Jour de gloire? Day of infamy more like. France cheated their way on to the last flight to South Africa. Thierry Henry handled not once, but twice in setting up William Gallas's goal that broke Irish hearts and all rules of sporting justice at the Stade de Fraud on Wednesday night. Henry is one of the game's most graceful performers and characters, an elegant attacker who has enchanted audiences across Europe but his name will now be associated with conning opponents and officials. This was Diego Maradona territory, subterfuge writ large, a defence beaten by the dark arts. Unlike England's Argentine nemesis in 1986, Henry has a conscience. How easily he will sleep after this remains to be seen."

"I felt for the Irish, who gave their all, and I also felt for Swedish referee Martin Hansson. So often the 'big' team seem to get decisions but up until the French goal Hansson had been superb. When Anelka went down late in the game a penalty looked possible but Hansson was not fooled by the Chelsea striker's dive. No blame could be apportioned to the referee, who had no chance of seeing Thierry Henry's disgraceful handball which set up his former team-mate William Gallas for the goal which takes France to the World Cup finals. Ironically, UEFA president Michel Platini's brainchild of two extra assistants would surely have detected the handball and may have prevented the French progressing - but they, along with video technology, were missing."

"He lets things drift. He exists in a vortex of uncertainty and rumour, of claim and counter-claim and senseless distortion. He’s a study in the Kafkaesque intrigue that surrounds so many modern footballers, a world of petty and impenetrable complexities. No one being able to pin anything down. No one knowing what’s happening. Everyone assuming he wants to leave but not knowing for sure [...] This is a man who is wasting his talent, who is letting it dissolve in this web of lies and double-speak. The irony is, I’m not even sure he’ll get back into the City team when he’s fit again. He’s getting awfully close to being surplus to requirements. He’s got to the stage at City already where he’d be a good player to have coming off the bench when you’re chasing a game."

"There is almost no need for sentence at all when a manager switches to rant mode because the loss of temper and dignity is penalty enough. ‘The politician who loses the debate is the one who gets nervous,’ said Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, earlier this season. ‘As soon as you become aggressive on television you have lost. It is a basic rule.’ He is right. Had Maradona been calm and considered after the victory over Uruguay, his critics would have had little choice but to report that he had conjured a very useful away win to take his country to the World Cup. Instead, he was again depicted as a human train wreck and a liability to Argentina’s hopes of success. Maradona was the biggest loser here, in line with Wenger’s observation. So, too, Ferguson who, having attacked Wiley’s condition, was quickly discredited when it transpired the official had run a greater distance than all but four Manchester United players during the match with Sunderland. The more a manager rails at referees, the less he is heard."

"The kindest comment to be made about England's loss to Brazil on Saturday was that the squad could use some practice. They will not be getting it. A friendly in March is the only preparation the players will have before the close of the Premier League programme. The expected couple of games prior to the start of the World Cup will simply bring such occasions into even deeper disrepute. Other nations have constructed more extensive programmes that will be to their advantage. Nearly all the sides above England in the Fifa rankings have a match arranged for this week as well. Germany are the exception and play only one friendly in this window, as they cancelled last Saturday's game with Chile following the death of the goalkeeper Robert Enke, but the team will return to the field against Ivory Coast tomorrow. Were the players still together, they would now be busy trying to correct their work in the areas where they faltered. It is unimaginable that Fabio Capello would not be emphasising once more the absolute necessity of keeping possession. His exasperation was vivid when Wayne Rooney, with the match scarcely under way, attempted difficult passes that presented the ball to the planet's best side."

"George Burley has gone - done in by the Scottish Football Association after one setback too many. If, like me, you have a perverse love of Scottish football, then you'll know this Burley palaver is just the latest in a long line of afflictions. The name of Scottish football should be Job. Below, set out in no particular order, is my top ten of things that are wrong with Scottish football. If anyone actually knows of a cure, simply drop me a line at The Times and I'll kindly pass it on to Gordon "Smudger" Smith at the SFA. 1. Rangers and Celtic - culpable! Sometime around 2001 Sir David Murray, the Rangers chairman, said to me: "Barry Ferguson, our one real player of quality produced by this club in ten years - not good enough." Rangers and Celtic have not done their bit for the Scottish game by requiring "ready-made imports" to come in and appease their fans, rather than take the time and patience to rear their own. Good on Hibernian, a club with an excellent record of nurturing Scottish talent, but the Old Firm? Guilty."

To the margins, on the stark evidence of his reserves’ merciful defeat by a Brazil near full strength, had been consigned Darren Bent, Joleon Lescott, Jermaine Jenas and Shaun Wright-Phillips; they ought to make contingency plans for holidays next June. As for the families and close friends of Matthew Upson and James Milner, the best advice would be to book something in South Africa, but avoid game-drives on match days.

The manager knows his team and the nine who did not appear alongside Wayne Rooney and Gareth Barry against Brazil were David James, Glen Johnson, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, David Beckham or Theo Walcott, Steven Gerrard and Emile Heskey. The shadow team now appear to be along these lines: Robert Green or Ben Foster, with the loser also to travel as third goalkeeper; Owen Hargreaves (if fully restored after tendinitis), Wes Brown, Upson and Wayne Bridge; Michael Carrick, Beckham or Walcott, Joe Cole and Milner in midfield; and, up front, Peter Crouch. Finished counting yet? Yes, the single place this leaves would be for Jermain Defoe, back to his least impressive in Doha, to defend against such a challenge as Michael Owen might muster or the prospect of Aaron Lennon’s pace being used with, rather than as an alternative to, that of Walcott.

The new young must-have English footballer is Jack Rodwell at Everton. He is 18, an England Under-21 midfielder for whom Chelsea have offered £14m already. But don't worry: Manchester United and Manchester City are making their own discreet enquiries and before long the price and the add-ons and the wages will rise. So, will it be a big house in Surrey or a big house in Cheshire? Will it be nights out with Lampsy and JT or nights out with Wazza and Rio? Here's a radical suggestion for young Master Rodwell: stay at Everton.

Rodwell is already at Everton. He has time and he does not need his career to be shaped by the psychotic impulse in clubs such as Chelsea to harvest the best young players and stockpile them on the off chance that they might turn into superstars. If his career continues on its present trajectory he has to trust that the financial rewards will come. As Wenger famously said to Nicolas Anelka before he left Arsenal in 1999, for all the riches available to young footballers they can only sleep in one bed at a time and drive one car at a time. In a sport awash with money for the talented few, the really important thing is knowing what is truly valuable. Rodwell should be playing at Old Trafford on Saturday. No price can be put on that.

"Wayne Rooney seldom suffers from apathy on a football pitch. The opportunity to be captain in Doha seemed to make him particularly animated, although frustration then gripped him even more quickly than usual. He had a craving to leave his mark on a game where the play was sometimes perfunctory, but this was one of his weaker outings for England. The responsibilities that accompany the armband looked excessive for someone who expects so much of himself even when he is not an office-bearer. It was, after all, frustration that caused a sending-off at the 2006 World Cup when, as a lone forward, Rooney stamped on Ricardo Carvalho while the Portuguese was marking him claustrophobically."

"The real winners for England were the players who didn't face Brazil last night. Men like David Beckham and Joe Cole must surely have increased their chances of being on the plane to South Africa. James Milner was the best of the wannabes, reasonable but not much more than that. Ben Foster, Joleon Lescott and Matthew Upson did okay but they made mistakes. Poor Darren Bent didn't have the service but sometimes a striker has to make things happen. Things didn't happen for the Sunderland man and as he walked off when substituted by Jermain Defoe, I fear his one big chance to grasp the nettle had gone. Jermain Defoe and Peter Crouch didn't do much more than Bent when they came on in the second half but the pressure wasn't on them in the same way.They have already scored goals for this season and their places in the squad are virtually assured. They will not have minded Bent failing to score. It is a terrible human trait to want rival players to fail when they are chasing your place in the team – I know, I have been there."

"That's right, Richard, divide and conquer. Let the French team, indeed the French nation, know that this man is what's dragging them back. "And what's the best way to get him sacked? That's right, mes amis, by not qualifying for the next World Cup. Wow, when did Dunne become Machiavelli? When did the Aston Villa stopper start scheming like Iago? Or to put it in terms the French would understand best, at what point did the rock at the centre of our defence begin to resemble the Marquise de Merteuil, the conniving villainess Glenn Close played in Dangerous Liaisons, who once said: 'Never open your mouth without first calculating how much damage you can do.' "Dunne, you may take your place at the court of the Dauphin. You may flutter your fan at the French nobles and sow doubt and discord. Previously I would have mainly trumpeted Dunne for his tackling and heading; now I see him in a powdered wig, dropping arch bon mots and undermining the aristocrats."

"While today's Irish squad includes players from Scunthorpe, Preston, Reading and Bohemians (and none from Continental Europe), every one of Domenech's party plays in the top division of one of the big leagues. Twenty of them have been playing in the Champions League this season and the loss through injury of Franck Ribéry and Gaël Clichy has not significantly weakened the squad. "There is a feeling among the French public that such a group should not be in this position and that the players, through a lack of respect for Domenech, are not living up to their potential. Karim Benzema, one of the most gifted of the younger players, admitted recently that he did not always try his hardest when playing for France. "In public at least, the squad are standing behind Domenech. On a day when the main headline in L'Equipe, the sports daily, said that the Irish saw the French coach as their best chance of victory, Sidney Govou, the experienced Lyons striker, rejected any such idea. 'He won't be on the pitch,' Govou said during a break from training at Clairefontaine. 'The Irish are trying to turn on the pressure, but there's no debate. We're united as a group and in attacking him they are attacking us. It's not a question of supporting him. The only support we can give him is by performing on the pitch.'"

"Aimé Jacquet, the coach who guided France to World Cup triumph in 1998 and later went on to oversee the national technical department, which was for a while the envy of football, had a nice turn of phrase about player development. "Tomorrow's football" he called it. A decade on and the conveyor belt of talent looks a little rusty. Who was the last outstanding graduate from the French system? Probably Franck Ribéry. But he is 26 years old. Below him the system is not functioning quite as effortlessly as it once did. In the aftermath of the 1998-2000 generation, France were highly successful in junior football. In 2001 they won the Under-17 World Cup and scouts from the world's top clubs scrambled for the signatures of la crème de la crème. Florent Sinama-Pongolle was player of the tournament. Anthony Le Tallec was runner-up for the award. Liverpool – through the French connections of Gérard Houllier – won the race and bought two teenagers who looked certainties to become established players at Anfield. Today both are 25. Sinama-Pongolle is a peripheral player at struggling Atlético Madrid, Le Tallec is at Le Mans."

"Enke apologised to his wife for taking his own life in a farewell note. Perhaps she can take a modicum of comfort from the fact that his suffering is finally at an end. For the unsuspecting team-mates and the coaching staff, however, the numbness must be tinged with incredibly dark thoughts of regret. Football encourages a sense of responsibility for your colleagues; some players might feel that Enke's desperate plunge in front of a train on Tuesday amounts to a failure in this regard. There is no easy way to negotiate these awful questions, no right or wrong, only shades of black. "This is why suicide must be so much harder to take than accidental or natural death: it has loved ones, work-mates and friends wracking their brains, wondering whether they could have somehow prevented the tragedy. I know that one prominent German player always suspected that Enke, a highly intelligent, sensitive man, wasn't quite up to the national job, not ready for the enormous pressure that comes with it. Will he feel guilty for harbouring those innocent thoughts now? Should he? "'Sometimes, it is just not possible to go back to business as usual,' said [DFB president, Theo] Zwanziger at the Kameha Grand press conference in Bonn. 'Sometimes you need to stop in your tracks and take stock.' The players and coaching staff, he added, had unanimously decided that they couldn't play football on Saturday. 'The friendly against Chile has been cancelled. We all need time to grieve and there's no fixed time-line for such a thing.' "'Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel' – after the game is before the game. Sepp Herberger's famous quip epitomises post-war Germany's determination to get on with it, its reluctance to dwell on the past. But for once, the show cannot go on."

"Why? That is the question that arises whenever we are confronted with the reality of a human being encompassing their own annihilation. From what impulse, what state of despair, could any healthy person wish to extinguish the flame of his own existence? "It is a question that, for many, is imbued with added urgency when the deceased seemed to have it all: wealth, a loving family, success, the acclaim of his peers and the public. How could any professional sportsman, living a life straight from the pages of Boy’s Own, wish to end it all in a moment of chilling and fearful pain? But this sentiment, while seemingly reasonable, is derived from one of the more pernicious, as well as the more stubborn, contemporary myths. "It is the idea that sporting success (or any other type) leads inexorably to emotional nirvana. It is the notion that we can avoid the more perilous neuroses of the mind with comic-book prescriptions about what makes us happy or, indeed, sad. "The reality is that depression is as prevalent among top sportsmen as it is among any other diverse group of people, as is a sense of worthlessness, fear, anxiety and low self-esteem. Professional sport, in many ways, demands neurosis. It makes a virtue of the obsessional pursuit of perfection: just ask Jonny Wilkinson who, even now, after months as a Buddhist, finds it difficult to free his mind from the tiny errors he made in his last practice session."

Players cheat because they can get away with it, pure and simple. It’s a tactic that works and can be decisive in finely balanced matches that may turn on the decision of a referee who must make split-second judgments and is ready to give fouls for minimal physical contact. he authorities must change this culture of cheating by making it in players’ interests to stay honest. The time to act is now because the next generation of footballers has grown up in the climate of dishonesty that has developed in recent seasons. They are going to be fabulous divers, even better than the present lot. I watch kids’ football sometimes and I’m amazed by their antics.

The only way to eradicate cheating is to punish it. The odd yellow card for simulation is not enough of a deterrent. The FA should treat diving like violent conduct and hand out three-match bans for offenders. If a referee misses a dive during a game, a video panel should review contentious incidents. Then managers may tell their players: “Don’t go over, I can’t afford to lose you for three games.” And the players may cut out this cheating that’s poisoning the game.

''On the day that England officially opened its bid to host the 2018 World Cup finals last May, in the appropriate surroundings of the Bobby Moore Suite at Wembley Stadium, it was hard to resist the heady feeling that football was finally coming home, even if, in a nod to the acute sensitivities of the vote-winning campaign ahead, that particular phrase had been declared off-limits. ''The preferred slogan - less imperial, more inclusive - was “England United, The World Invited”, but, as the months have passed, the prospect has arisen, not for the first time, of a party falling flat.''

''It comes back to that word: Realpolitik, politics based on self-interest or power rather than moral or idealistic concerns. When the executive committee members go to ballot in December next year, many will do so thinking less about what is best for the World Cup than about what is best for them and for their national interests. Trade-offs and flattery will get you everywhere. ''There is a duty to get behind the bid, to show the world how much England, as a nation, wants to host the World Cup. But right now there is a worrying feeling, emanating from inside the bid team, that football is not coming home, that a great opportunity is slipping away. Early days these may be, but it is time to step up the bid - before it is too late.''

''City have failed to capture the imagination of the locals - most people here don’t know who they are - but their manager is fully aware of the ambitions of the club’s Emirati owners,'' he begins. ''The place is still so barely populated that its many wide walkways are empty but when they decide they want Formula One racing, they build the most extraordinary piece of architecture in the sport at Yas Marina, inside two years. They believe they will have created the footballing equivalent one day, too.''

A sequence of one victory in the past nine matches in all competitions is simply not good enough for a club of Liverpool’s size and ambition and, no matter how much sympathy Benítez and his players might attract during an unforgiving crisis of confidence and personnel, they were grateful beneficiaries, as the manager admirably admitted afterwards, of a highly contentious penalty award midway through the second half when David Ngog went to ground without being touched by Lee Carsley. A half-fit Steven Gerrard, who had come off the bench as a substitute for the hamstrung Albert Riera, converted the penalty, but, no matter what he and the enterprising Glen Johnson tried as they went in search of the winning goal in the final quarter of the game, Birmingham stood firm. It was a strange game, with Liverpool starting like a house on fire, taking an early lead through Ngog’s acrobatic volley and yet somehow they were 2-1 down by half-time. Rafael Benítez was right to take some comfort from the way his team had performed, but, even when their football was at their most incisive when they led, there was a haphazard, reckless feel to their play that was contrary to everything that their manager has spent the past five years trying to instil in them. It is nothing that an upturn in confidence should not be able to rectify, but what will come first: the confidence that yields a result or the result that yields the upturn? The momentum gained from one supposed turning point, the victory over Manchester United last month, soon dissipated and their first game after the international break, at home to Manchester City on November 21, has now assumed huge importance for both clubs.

Gerrard is seen, with good reason, as a panacea to all of Liverpool’s ills. His class, his quality, his endless power and boundless reserves of quality see to that. When he is absent, as he was for 44 minutes here, Liverpool lack urgency, that cutting edge of quality.

"United’s defeat at Chelsea was undoubtedly a blow to their title hopes, but their performance was impressive and only wasteful finishing, and the absence of a strike-partner for Wayne Rooney, denied them a point or even three. So what about Owen? Has the time now come for him to be given the Premier League opportunity that his patience and track record arguably deserve? One certainty is that he won’t score goals while sat on the bench. He has shown glimpses of his predatory instinct, so perhaps he should now be unleashed from the start of games. After all, isn’t that what Manchester United are supposed to be about? Beating teams on the front foot and making opponents worry about their firepower? True, they do not, and cannot, carry the same threat without the unique talents of Cristiano Ronaldo. But those pointing to the loss of Carlos Tevez as another factor behind United’s blunted edge miss the point that Owen’s record this season is better than the Argentine’s. Tevez has scored four goals in 13 appearances for Manchester City, but while Owen has started six games for United, Tevez has been a substitute just once."

"Every fibre in Terry’s body must have ached for the revenge of a winning goal against Manchester United, particularly this day, when he would have known the ground was alive with mockery and whispers, yet he let the moment pass. This is captaincy of the highest order, Terry putting his mind on the line, as much as his body. He sacrifices, the way Tony Adams once did for Arsenal and Roy Keane for Manchester United, and that level of commitment takes its toll in the end. John Terry celebrates after beating Manchester United All things considered, it is a wonder Terry remains relatively untroubled by demons. His record is not entirely unblemished but the majority of indiscretions took place early in his career and there seems to be evidence of maturity arriving with age. ...Ancelotti increasingly resembles the last coach to fashion a great Chelsea team, Jose Mourinho. He created a title-winning Chelsea side on a home fortress — he never lost here, and neither has Ancelotti so far — and on a team built from the back on the reliability of his captain, Terry. "

Arsenal force us to confront a philosophical tangle. Do a club need to win things to bring meaning to their endeavours or is the pursuit of creativity sufficient to justify the effort? This is where Wenger's problem starts, because he cannot cultivate artistic football without promising something at the end of it. Hence the constant depiction of this new Arsenal as a train you can hear coming in the night but not quite see. This was vintage Wenger, in midweek, after the 4-1 Champions League win over AZ Alkmaar: "We grow from game to game. We get stronger from game to game and it's important to keep that attitude to progress and improve, play for each other and improve even more. We have to believe in our future." There is a whiff of the hustings about this. If Barack Obama is accused of governing America by speeches, Wenger might be charged with chasing trophies by eloquence. Except that he has held plenty of English metal: three Premier League titles, with two League and FA Cup Doubles. The question is not whether he can convert romanticism into silver but whether he can do so now on the furthest borders of his own aesthetic principles.

Liverpool supporters keep saying it, Rafa Benitez can’t help but plead for it, and practically everyone seems to agree that this football lark shouldn’t be judged in the simple black and white of winning and losing. But here are the statistics that matter: one win in eight games, currently placed sixth in the table and with distant hopes of avoiding Champions League ignominy reliant on the results of others. It could explain why Benitez says: ‘I don’t agree with people when they say you have to win trophies.’ How things have changed. There was a time when success at Liverpool was about nothing else but winning trophies; it was ingrained in their culture.