The FAI have refuted the allegations and the footage from the match show Lionel Messi was tackled at least once (Richard Dunne certainly made full contact), but earlier today an Argentinean newspaper, La Nacion made claims that Irish players were paid $10K each to not tackle the Barcelona star during a 2010 Aviva Stadium encounter.
To get an idea why La Nacion would make such allegations, we spoke to journalist and The Guardian contributor Marcela Mora y Araujo on Off The Ball.
"The idea that every single Irish player would have been given an envelope with cash is actually risible and ludicrous," she said.
Mora y Araujo also gave us an insight into the late former Argentinean FA chief and ex-FIFA senior vice-president Julio Grondona, who La Nacion say also arranged for Argentina to play Messi in the match as a means of appeasing the FAI after the Thierry Henry handball fallout.
"I can't imagine him saying, 'we'll pay the players not to kick Messi' because it's just slightly crass and a little bit too overt. He was somehow more subtle," said Mora y Araujo on that aspect of the story.
She also shared an anecdote about bumping into Grondona in a hotel corridor before Diego Maradona's first match in charge of Argentina against Scotland in 2008, when the ex-Argentinean FA chief openly shared concerns to her about a Russian company sponsoring the county's friendlies warning that they would pay $1M less if Messi did not play.
"He was absolutely livid that this company were trying to give him a $1M less than what had been agreed. So I can't imagine him boasting that he would have given every Irish player a few grand not to kick Messi. But I can imagine that he would partake somehow in negotiations that do involve money," she said.
