Henry’s handball is French ‘sports story of the year’

What a comedown. This time last year Thierry Henry had the world, and the ball, at his feet. Barcelona were about to embark on a charge that ended in the treble of the Spanish league, cup and Champions League, and the 32-year-old former Arsenal striker was also looking forward to leading his country to the 2010 World Cup finals.
 
Now Henry’s world has been turned upside down ever since he deliberately handled the ball in the build-up to the decisive goal that saw France qualify for the World Cup at the expense of Ireland.
 
Today, 24 hours after after Lionel Messi was awarded Fifa’s World Player of the Year (Henry was runner-up in 2003 and 2004), the Frenchman has scooped a rather less prestigious accolade.
 
Readers of Le Parisien, France's most popular tabloid, have overwhelmingly voted his handball the most dramatic sports story of 2009. Henry polled 55 per cent of the vote with Lance Armstrong's comeback in the Tour de France coming a distant second on eight per cent.
 
Le Parisien fumed that Henry had "damaged the spirit of French sport" before enlisting the help of some of the country's other sporting stars to put the boot into the fallen footballer. Fencer Fabrice Jeannet,  a double Olympic gold medallist, described the handball as "intolerable" and regretted that "Henry did not own up to what he had done during the match".
 
Pole vaulter Romain Mesnil, a World Athletics Championships' silver medallist, declared himself "shocked" by Henry's behaviour and said he had damaged France's "international relations".

If that wasn't bad enough for Henry, former teammate Zinedine Zidane said in an interview this week with France Football magazine that he hoped "Henry is not proud of his gesture" - this from a man who was sent off in the last World Cup final for head-butting Italy's Marco Materazzi . ·