SOCCER / GRAHAME L. JONES : Focus Is on Cantona, but What About the Hooligan in England?
First there was Bruce Grobbelaar, the Southampton and Zimbabwe national team goalkeeper accused by an English tabloid of match-fixing.
Then there was Paul Merson, the Arsenal and England national team midfielder who admitted using cocaine and running up huge gambling debts.
Then there was George Graham, the Arsenal coach who is being investigated for allegedly receiving financial kickbacks for the transfer of players.
Has the game in England gone completely haywire?
“English football has almost exhausted its capacity to shock after a first half of the season unprecedented for the number of scandals it produced,” Colin Malam wrote in the Sunday Telegraph a few weeks ago.
He is wrong.
Last Wednesday, Eric Cantona, the French national team striker who plays for Manchester United, shocked even the most cynical observer with his violent attack on a spectator.
Cantona, a volatile and hot-tempered player at the best of times, already was angry at being red-carded in United’s game against Crystal Palace in London.
The spectator taunted him with vile and racist language as he was leaving the field. Cantona reacted with kicks and punches that were shown on television around the world.
The effect was swift and predictable. Manchester United banned Cantona for the rest of the season and is likely to trade him to a team in Italy, possibly Inter Milan. The French federation stripped him of his national team captaincy and said he would not play for France again this year.
So far, so good.
But what about the spectator?
He, not Cantona, caused the incident. The sport has received yet another black eye because of a hooligan inciting an unfortunate reaction from a player known to have a hair-trigger temper.
When is England going to do something more than apologize for the ignorant thugs who masquerade as fans, but who come to matches only to cause trouble?
The 20-year-old spectator in question--he cannot be called a fan--has been banned by Crystal Palace and had his season ticket yanked, but that’s not enough.
It turns out he has a criminal record, having assaulted a Sri Lankan-born gas station attendant with a wrench during a robbery attempt.
It turns out he is a supporter of far-right extremist groups.
It turns out he is being investigated by police for the foul and abusive language he directed toward Cantona.
Racial slurs have been a common curse of the English game for decades. Sadly, they have not diminished.
In fact, the influx of world-class players such as Cantona into the English Premier League has given the misguided minority new targets at whom to aim their abuse.
Yes, Cantona was wrong to attack his taunter. But there are many who would have liked to have seen him kick him harder.
If soccer officials in England don’t remove such stains from the game, is it really surprising when the players take action?
Cleansing the game of its racist undertones, not three consecutive championships won, might well be Cantona’s legacy in England.
But only if officials take action.
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Three major moves along the transfer trail during the past month include:
--Romario moving from Barcelona in Spain to Flamengo in Brazil for a figure variously reported as between $4.5-7 million.
--Andy Cole moving from Newcastle United in England to Manchester United for an English-record $10.5 million.
--Anthony Yeboah of Ghana moving from Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany to Leeds United in England for $5.1 million.
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Take another look. Now consider that the player budget for Major League Soccer is fixed at $1.3 million per team .
Any guesses what the quality of players will be like if and when MLS ever gets up and running in the United States next year?
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An interesting feud is going on between Roberto Baggio of Italy and Julio Salinas of Spain.
Their teams, some might recall, met at Foxboro Stadium outside Boston in the quarterfinals of the World Cup last summer.
The Italians prevailed, 2-1, after Salinas made a mess of a goal-scoring chance late in the game that would have put the Spanish in front and the Italians on the ropes.
Salinas, who was traded from Barcelona to Deportivo La Coruna after the World Cup, spotted an interview in which Baggio referred to him in dismissive fashion as “the clumsy one who missed that open goal against us.”
With 22 goals in 50 national team games, Salinas was not about to let that go unanswered.
“If Baggio is so damn good,” he shot back, “he shouldn’t have missed his penalty in the (World Cup) final (against Brazil), should he?
“That’s what I call clumsy.”
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FIFA today will announce its world player of the year for 1994 at the usual gala bash, this time in Lisbon, Portugal.
The three finalists, not surprisingly, are Brazil’s Romario, Italy’s Baggio and Bulgaria’s Hristo Stoitchkov.
Look for Romario to be the choice of the more than 100 national team coaches who were polled.
The first three winners were Germany’s Lothar Matthaeus in 1991, Marco Van Basten of The Netherlands in 1992 and Baggio in 1993.
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Once again, the U.S. Soccer Federation is way behind in announcing its schedule of games for the year ahead.
There is talk of a trip to Belgium to help the Belgians celebrate their soccer centenary and of games against England, Nigeria, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay in the United States. Portugal and Russia also were being mentioned as likely opponents.
There also is the possibility of an unprecedented game against Vietnam in Hanoi. If that comes about, it would mark the first visit by an American sports team to that country in several decades.
But there is no official word from USSF headquarters in Chicago. As a result, indifference reigns.
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Typical of the USSF’s continuing inability to properly promote its sport was the recent visit to the United States by the Australian women’s national team.
The Aussies were scheduled to play the defending world champion United States women’s team twice in Southern California, but bad weather locally forced the U.S. team to move its training camp to Phoenix.
There, the U.S. team won both games, 5-0 and 4-1, behind closed doors.
“We didn’t have time to organize the games,” a USSF spokesperson said, “so they were just scrimmages.”
It has been 3 1/2 years since the United States won its only world soccer championship, and in that time the USSF has done absolutely nothing to recognize the women’s achievement or to use their success to help promote women’s soccer.
pichar
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FIFA President Joao Havelange and Joseph (Sepp) Blatter, FIFA’s general secretary, have made a huge mistake by firing two of the organization’s most competent and well-respected figures.
Miguel Galan of Chile, the former FIFA competitions director, and Guido Tognoni of Switzerland, the former FIFA media director, were dismissed only days after being promoted. The reason given by Blatter was that there had been “a breakdown of mutual confidence” between FIFA and the pair.
What absolute nonsense.
It is obvious that Havelange still is getting rid of those he perceives as undermining his increasingly autocratic regime. Blatter does not have the courage to stop him.
Havelange and Blatter need to be removed from power so that FIFA can put its political infighting behind it and get back to administering the game properly.
