WORLD VIEWS

GERMANY

The centrist daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on an assessment of the U.S. team by a player who competed against it in an exhibition:

“The sweeper of FC Gueugnon, Romain Giroud, betrays how the U.S. team played: ‘For a participant of a World Championship they were very, very weak. The Germans will finish them off 6-0.’ ”

FRANCE

From L’Equipe, the sports daily:

“France, in France, in the World Cup. There are many of us who have never seen that. There are even more of us who will never see it again. . . . That’s why we expect so much from the French team. That’s why we don’t let anything pass. Because we so much want to like, to admire, to accompany the team to the foot of the altar where it will, on July 12, be married to eternal glory.”

ROME

From La Stampa, which carried the headline, “Baggio Saves a Little Italy”:

“There was something epic in that penalty with which Roberto Baggio took Chile by the scruff of the neck and blocked the firing squad. From Pasadena to Bordeaux, time and history compensated him for an error which cost him dearly. . . . Baggio: first he wins over Cesare Maldini, and then he takes possession of a strange Italian side, brilliant for barely 20 minutes, and then lumbering, accursedly grey until the chaotic final charge in the last quarter of an hour.”

CHINA

From an advertisement in the Beijing Youth Daily:

“France 98 World Cup: 64 matches and most of them after 11:30 p.m. Beijing time--the next day on the move at 5 o’clock in the morning. How can you manage watching soccer and working?”

Two larger banners across the middle of the ad have the answer: “6 turtle pills right before dawn and working and watching will be unhindered.”

The special stimulant, which is “100% produced from turtles,” relies for its active ingredients on “turtle proteins” and “turtle polypeptides,” which allow the user to “burn the midnight oil” without ill effect.

ISRAEL

From a Q & A with Israeli deputy Defense Minister Silvan Shalom in the Haaretz newspaper:

Q. How do you explain the fact that Israelis are so crazy about the World Cup, when our team did not make it to the games?

A. There are crazier countries than ours. The English were crazy about the games even when they did not make it to the World Cup. The problem with us is that we are crazy about soccer, but we don’t go to watch the games. We settle for the radio coverage, television and the newspaper. . . . The stadiums are empty on Saturdays. That’s our real problem.

SOUTH AFRICA

From the Star in Johannesburg:

“It’s D-Day. It’s the most important game in the history of the nation. It’s a cause for which Bafana Bafana are prepared to die.

“Cliches all, yes, but for once they are all true. The squad carry the hopes of a country obsessed when they take on host nation France . . . in South Africa’s first appearance in the greatest show on earth--the soccer World Cup.”

Correspondents Christian Retzlaff in Berlin, Helene Elliott in Paris, Vanora Bennett in London, Maria De Cristofaro in Rome, Jason Dean in Beijing, Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem, Dean Murphy in Nairobi.