“Leaving the Stade de France after the Thierry Henry handball against the Republic of Ireland, a prominent figure from French politics, Philippe Seguin, remarked to a friend: ‘Even football isn’t what it was.’ Seguin, a former president of the French parliament, died a few weeks later. If he was glum about France’s dubious passage to the World Cup finals, one wonders what would he have thought had he lived to see the mutiny.” (WSC)