TAKING THE SHIRT OFF PIRES BACK


Champs
By LW
March 18 2005

It seems extraordinary that for wearing the ‘wrong shirt’ on French TV, Robert Pires has been fined £35,000 by the French Football Federation; for what was obviously an oversight on his part.

  One can only conclude that he would not have wantonly incurred their wrath; and presumably laundry timetables had run amok in his household, and the ‘one on, one off, and one in the wash’ regime was in reality ‘one off, one in the wash and one somewhere under the bed’.

The enormity of the fine, for the wearing of a Puma shirt, rather than the official FFF Adidas, one is so staggering as to be laughable. If I were Robert I would keep a neatly fold Adidas shirt with me at all times in the eventuality of meeting roving French TV reporters.

The less acceptable face of all this is that the fine against Luis Aragones for his appalling racist remarks against Thierry Henry is a mere £2,000. (It was interesting to note that Almunia and Reyes were purported to have backed Aragones. Saying that he hadn’t been racist and that what was meant had been lost in translation. I expect that caused a frisson in the Arsenal home changing room).

 Back in January, Paolo di Canio carried away after a 3 – 1 victory against Roma gave his Lazio fans a Nazi salute. Well, old habits die hard in Italy. I expect he was really waving and his arm went into rictus. He got fined £7,000, as did his club.

 What can be done about the disparities here is beyond me unless FIFA lay down some solid rules. Which one would have presumed they already had.

In the meantime, poor Robert is out of the French National side whilst hoping for an 80th cap, will have time to get his washing up to date and to rue his sartorial excess whilst wielding the steam – iron.

 HENRY: Another interesting thing question is how are the French going to get Henry over his calf strain, said to be putting him out of action for 3 weeks, when they only have 2 weeks to do it in.

I was surprised to see that he had been called up for the French squad. I had already wondered if this calf strain, picked up at the Bayern match, was really a matter of fury at getting knocked out of the Champions league.

But if he is not fit for Arsenal why should his first game be for the French Team?