Almost twenty years after the facts, Pierre Ménès has still not digested what he considers to be a media injustice. Asked about the difference in treatment between Thierry Henry's hand against Ireland (2009) and Zinédine Zidane's headache in Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final, the journalist dropped his filter truths. For him, one was lynched, the other sanctified.
“I have always been shocked by the difference in treatment. We have too easily forgiven, even glorified Zidane's ball, when it was more scandalous and inadmissible than Henry's involuntary hand ”let go of Ménès on his YouTube channel. A whim that had “Maybe cost a world cup in France”where Henry's hand, although controversial, had allowed a qualification for a World Cup.
“We found all the excuses of the world to him”
According to Ménès, the relentlessness against Henry has taken delusional proportions, until there causes a total questioning in the former Gunner. “The next day, he said to me: 'I stop the French team.' I had to call Domenech to try to hold him back. Thierry had not measured the magnitude of the media tsunami. Even Roselyne Bachelot got involved! »»
Opposite, Zinedine Zidane was protected, understood, even erected as a tragic hero. “We found all the apologies from the world. But hey, it's Saint Zizou, and his ugly apostles ”, quipped Ménès. A barely veiled criticism of the preferential treatment reserved for the legendary number 10. This double media standard remains for the journalist a revealer of the unequal treatment of French icons.
