Henry to escape punishment over handball

French captain Thierry Henry escaped being punished for his infamous handball in the 2010 World Cup finals play-off against Ireland, FIFA announced yesterday.

FIFA's disciplinary committee said that they were powerless to punish the 1998 World Cup-winning striker because their rules forbade them to do so if the original misdemeanour had not been seen by the match officials.

"There is no other legal text that would allow the committee to impose sanctions for any incidents missed by match officials," FIFA said in a statement.

The meeting of the 21-man disciplinary panel, an independent body chaired by the Swiss Marcel Mathier, was announced by FIFA president Sepp Blatter in Cape Town on December 2 following an extraordinary executive committee meeting.

"I had a phone conversation with Thierry Henry," said Blatter.

"We didn't talk about guilty or not guilty. It was a conversation between sportsmen. I didn't say that he would be punished, I said he'd be the subject of an investigation."

Blatter's diplomacy can be explained by the lack of precedent regarding retrospective punishments meted out to players.

Any punishment meted out would have been purely a symbolic one as FIFA's rules do not explicitly address incidents of such a nature and a heavy punishment would have created an unwelcome precedent for FIFA.