What started out as a celebration turned into a nightmare when a Thierry Henry kicked a ball into Kevin Hartman's foot, causing the FC Dallas goalkeeper to suffer a sprained MCL that could sideline him for several weeks.
The incident came after a Mehdi Ballouchy goal in Thursday's Red Bulls-FC Dallas match. Henry went to kick the ball away after it had ricocheted out of the net, but just before he did, Hartman stuck his raised foot behind the ball. Henry's subsequent blast jarred Hartman's leg and sent him sprawling. He left the match at halftime after being unable to to make it through warm-ups.
Here is the video of the incident:
Here is our question for you. Do you think Henry should face some discipline for the incident, or do you think it was just a fluke incident? Cast your vote here:
What's my take? I think it was a fluke play that could have merited a second yellow card for Henry, but since the referee saw it and already addressed it, stating he saw nothing worthy of punishment, it doesn't seem likely MLS would overrule the referee. The league does issue retroactive punishment at times, but it usually involves plays the referee didn't see. There will surely be a protest from Dallas, and there is already talk suggesting that MLS won't suspend Henry because of the upcoming high-profile match against the Los Angeles Galaxy. In short, this story isn't likely to go away any time soon.
How did you vote? What did you think of the play?
Share your thoughts below.
I was at the game, but seeing the footage close up and in slo mo confirmed to me that this was, DEFINITELY, Henry’s best shot on goal all night.
Too bad for Hartmann and FCD.
Oh snap…wanker gets served. Now I challenge you to a dance fight. That’s unfair I love you lets get married.
Trust me, KH was and is pissed at the Cheater. Don’t take his toeing the MLS line as an indication of how he really feels. I spoke with him after the game and he is not happy.
(SBI-Is that right Joey? I wonder if he’d be happy knowing you’re on here name-calling and using multiple names to try and advance an argument. Grow up.)
Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.
well at least his IQ is 40 points higher than yours! Bravo! Loser!
Ives you are such a idiot homer. Those of us sitting right behind the goal could clearly see KH with his foot on the ball and suddenly the CHeater kicks it out. KH did not know what hit him.
(SBI-Grow up Joey/Darrell/NewYorkSucks (yep, all the same guy). As for your claim about where you sat, how on earth do you figure that a view from the seats behind Hartman offered a better view than the TV replay? Oh right, you can’t help yourself. If you can’t play nice, or offer anything besides insults, you probably just keep to yourself. See ya.)
I believe there was a second kicker who was standing on a grassy knoll.
Poor, poor Hyndman…
and your IQ is 50! Bravo!
So is the KISS concert why this game was moved up to Thursday from Saturday?
Yea, I’m a sarcastic prick and you’re a pompous prick. Let’s call the whole thing off?
Like sublicon said it is a wash… No sure it was immature though…lots of players celebrate goals in different ways and Titi does this often.. Hartman wanted to stop him so he did and payed the price! No fine or suspension is warranted!
Actually a lot . I have seen people drill the ball after Pk’s, I’ve seen Michael Bradley drill a ball when he was outside the box before the goal…. It happens a lot, just because you may hate NY or your one of the handful of Dallas fans, doesn’t mean you have to see this through your own rosy glasses.
I see your point about the Henry/Hartman situation…but there is no way you can relate these two incidents. Not even close to the same thing. If Sanchez had succeeded in tripping Beasley that would have been all on Sanchez because he lunged out at Beas.
You guys keep attributing the same quote to Hartman but he was clearly bothered by it, as was the staff.
Heck, that was the most effort Henry put into a play all night.
From a blog…
“I guess he was going to try to score again,” Hartman told me, tongue in cheek.
From soccer america…
FC Dallas coach Schellas Hyndman said, “It’s the weight it puts on us now. I thought Hartman was going to be up for MVP. Now we have to go get a pool goalkeeper. It was something that was not necessary, so we’ll see what happens.”
MLS bends its own rules for NY and LA. Nothing will come of this and The Cheating Handball Frog will play against Tight Jersey Golden Balls….MLS will rejoice.
Everything would have been fine if he just used his hand again.
That’s nice, and sometimes ankles are broken on clean plays as well. What’s your point?
Everything would have been fine if he just used his hand again.
So people aren’t allowed to be extremely pissed right after an incident then cool off and decide later that it wasn’t as bad as they first thought? There have been plenty of times when i have had a go at someone on the field then later felt like a complete tool and apologized, realizing there was nothing malicious in the challenge.
Ives, you’ve been around a while, have you ever seen such physical play, so many injuries, and so much drama in a non-playoff MLS match?
Mutual dumb plays cancel each other out in this instance. I voted for the 4th option. And I take credit as being the first person to suggest (her and on twitter) that MLS will NEVER suspend Henry for what could be the marquee matchup of the year: Donovan, Beckham, Henry, Rafa, JPA, Buddle.
Ives, I think you are looking through this with (Red Bull) colored glasses.
I am a DC United fan (unfortunately) living on the beach in SoCal(fortunately). I have no dog in this fight. Objectively I stand by what I see in the video which is Hartman having every right to the ball and being there long before Henry. It is absolutely a yellow card.
(SBI-Say what you want, but don’t deny facts. Look at the video, pause it right when Hartman actually gets to the ball, you know, when he actually gets his foot out. If you pause the video there you’ll see Henry is already in full swing with his head down.)
Please, people, stop suggesting that Hartman was already on the ball, or that Hartman was just trying to get the ball back to midfield, or that Hartman didn’t know what was happening. Here’s what Hartman said: “Henry went to hit the ball and I tried to intercede, and unfortunately got hurt.” Hartman knew what was going on, tried to stop it, and got hurt. Silly goal celebration followed by a silly attempt to stop it. Nothing worthy of a fine or a suspension.
Shea’s dumb red card tackle was almost exactly how my friend’s ankle was broken. Shea can suck it
While players do kick balls back in to the net usually the ball is sitting there and nobody is around it.
What Henry did was ridiculous. It deserved – at least – a yellow. I despised him well before this incident but it grew last night. Too bad Shea the enforcer wasn’t around… 😉
except that it would have gone nowhere near the net. This was all happening off to the side. It sounds like you didn’t see the incident at all. I do agree though that there shouldn’t be any suspension. It wasn’t malicious, but if I were a FC Dallas fan, I’d be pretty pissed, although its a bit unfair to direct it Henry.
so balluchy just scores a goal, right? so why is hartman kicking the ball. its not an official referee designated kick from the goalkeeper, so since its not official the league shouldnt step in here. they should simply say, “hey dud (hartman), you knew it was a goal. why set up as though it wasnt?”
I agree with “Nothing. It was a fluke play”, but I disagree that noone was at fault. It was a stupid move by Henry, but I don’t think he should be suspended for it.
Seriously? Why is it that internet conversations immediately turn people into sarcastic pricks?
One of the problems with MLS has been and continues to be the officials. This play aside, and I also missed the Brek Shea red card. There was a play early in the second half where Tony Tcani makes a sliding tackle on one of the Dallas players. Tcani comes from the players left and behind and does not get the ball, he is whistled for the foul. In the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, and World Cup play this would have been a yellow card no doubt. In MLS and CONCACAF this is just a foul.
He was joking you idiot. Did your dog die or something?
I think it’s irrelevant if KH was trying to spoil a celebration or not.
1. It’s a deadball situation with FCD having the rights to the ball (to return it to midfield). Yeah, we see celebrations all the time where someone kicks the ball into the net a second time. And that’s not a card or a foul. Unless it results in an injury. You get to celebrate as long as it doesn’t involve injuring someone or kicking the ball away from them. Let me give you an analogy–goal scorers all around the globe will do things like run to the corner flag and do a little dance. Or do a dive into the grass. And that’s fine (as long as they don’t delay the match or take their shirt off). But if the process of running to the corner flag, I ran down the back of an opposing player and injured him, it wouldn’t be permissable to say “well, it’s a fluke play” or “people do this celebration all the time.”
2. I don’t think there was any malicious intent by Henry. I suspect both players, b/c play was dead, had their heads down, weren’t aware of other traffic around. I don’t think Henry tried to kick it away from Hartmann or tried to hurt him.
3. I’m one of those people who believes that yeah, you let the CCR call the match. But if you see series stuff afterwards that wasn’t caught, it’s okay to institute a fine or suspension or penalty. For me it would be one game b/c Henry has no record of this stuff in MLS (though if Carlos Ruiz had pulled it–a hefty sit-down would be in order).
There are injuries through contact that I tend to tolerate when it’s in the run of play. But when it’s a deadball situation, even if meant innocently, plays that hurt other players and take them out of the match are bad.
Except that Henry’s celebration was a) far away from the rest of the team celebrating, and b) at least 3-4 seconds after the goal was scored, which is way beyond what most would consider an “acceptable” amount of time in which the offensive player should be able to kick the ball in celebration. The goal was scored at 47:13, and the camera angle switches at 47:16, and the Dallas defender is still on the ground facing the goal. Call it a second for the defender to turn around and start to stand up – that’s 4 seconds. Kicking the ball into the goal in celebration as it is rolling out is common, but that’s generally immediately after the goal is scored, with no other players around. This was completely different. Henry had no absolutely no business doing what he did and is completely at fault.
And I agree with Ismitje – this is poor writing, Ives.
Jessie,
Since you are not “lazy”, please post a picture…Free site, SBI won’t screen it.
If you have it post it.
Man if all the Dallas fans who posted on this pag actually went to games, Dallas wouldn’t have attendance issues…. Way too good of a team to have such poor attendance. Too bad Kiss couldn’t come every week.
Henry follows through directly into Hartman’s in-step. Pretty easy to see that. But you’re probably right, everyone is wrong and Hartman is faking.
You write the caption: No pictures of Henry could be found for the match in question because Henry was invisible.
I hate it when the pictures on these stories don’t match the incident. Lazy.
(SBI- Lazy? Or maybe we HAD NO PHOTOS of the incident. Gotta love pointless trash talk.)
lol, no it isnt. Hartman said himself, he was frustrated and tried to get to the ball before henry’s celebration… shut up
I’m disappointed by the write-up here, which makes it sound as if Hartman did something wrong (“Henry went to kick the ball away after it had ricocheted out of the net, but just before he did, Hartman stuck his raised foot behind the ball”). That’s below you, Ives, and remarkably misleading.
Definitely deserving of a 1 game suspension at least, fluke play to be sure, but now FC Dallas is without their MVP keeper for what could amount to the rest of the season. There has to a punishment for stupidity, intentional or not.
Almost this exact same thing happened to me. i was just trying to pass the ball when another player stuck his foot in and i hit the back of his heel with the arch of my foot. At the time i was in the best shape of my life and i hadn’t even put alot of power into the pass. It didn’t matter though because i couldn’t play for about 4 months after that.
These kind of thing can happen way easier than some people realize.
Hartman admitted to stepping in front of the ball in an effort to stop Henry from celebrating.
The rest of you who keep demonizing Henry with “the keeper was going to reset the ball, and he was going after the ball to put it back to the middle” can stop.
When your legs kick out behind in a completely different direction than the force of the impact, that’s called a flop. The play was over Henry was just having fun with the ball (which is what I pay to see). I don’t blame Hartman for trying to stop Henry from touching the ball (it’s in goalkeeper DNA), but you better have some regard for your personal safety next time.
I ave a feeling of deja vu. Anyone else think they’ve seen a similar incident before?
I don’t know how the heck neither player saw each other.
(SBI-They were looking dead at each other, but at the point when they stop looking at each other is when Henry goes for the kick. Just at that moment Hartman makes the move for the ball. He hadn’t made a play for the ball when Henry puts his focus on the ball. The idea that Hartman was on the ball for some time before Henry even started to kick is nuts. Just pause the video right when Hartman puts his foot behind the ball. Henry is already in his shooting stride, head down.)
Rory, You hit it exactly on the head. That Hartman was injured is, though unfortunate, entirely incidental. The point is that Henry was delaying the game with his antics, and that should have gotten him a yellow.
However, that official knew full well that it would be a while before he got to work a big match again if he sent off the player that caused only the 2nd or 3rd full house of the entire season at Pizza Hut Park.
“Henry had no business going in there.”
Should have been a yellow and ejected.
+1
How often do you see players kick the ball like that five seconds after the goal is scored? It’s one thing for a player to do it straight after the goal is scored and the player was already making that run in, but it was well after the goal and Henry wasn’t that close to the initial play. And looking at where Henry was going to kick the ball, it wasn’t going to be towards the goal – it was going to be blasting it at the boards, or maybe into the crowd. Hard to tell.