FIFA May Read England the Riot Act
The European Championship got exactly what it wanted Tuesday when an aged and toothless Germany and a hooligan-sabotaged England bowed out of the 16-nation tournament.
The first-round exit by the two former world champions demonstrates just how far both countries’ soccer fortunes have fallen.
Defending champion Germany’s abject 3-0 defeat against an exhilarating Portugal in Rotterdam, Netherlands, marks the end of the road for one of the game’s great players, Lothar Matthaeus.
Similarly, England’s woeful 3-2 loss to Romania in Charleroi, Belgium, is the final chapter in the career of captain Alan Shearer.
Both players obviously wanted things to end on a better note, but Germany is a team that still has not recovered from its shocking loss to Croatia in the 1998 World Cup quarterfinals, while England is a team beset by drunken louts who pass themselves off as fans.
Those same thugs have, almost certainly, cost their country the chance to stage the 2006 World Cup.
In light of the rioting in Charleroi and Brussels during the last week by hundreds of English “fans”--whether provoked or not--FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, is unlikely to look favorably on England’s 2006 bid when it votes July 6.
That’s when it will choose between Brazil, England, Germany, Morocco and South Africa as the 2006 host.
Brazil and Morocco were always longshots, which is why South Africa has been pushing them to withdraw in its favor. Now, England’s inability to control its own fans has scuttled its hopes, leaving the race between Germany and South Africa.
In a particularly blinkered comment in the wake of the latest rampage in what has been a quarter-century of English hooliganism, Alec McGivan, the director of England’s bid to host the 2006 tournament, said he did not know what impact it would have.
“The 24 men on FIFA’s executive committee who will make the decision all know England very well and I think they understand that this is a problem which only happens outside England now,” McGivan said.
It might not happen much longer.
England’s elimination from the tournament frees UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, from having to implement its threat to expel the England team from the tournament should more violence occur.
But it didn’t stop one influential politician from calling for even stronger measures.
Gerhard Schmid, a vice president of the European Parliament, on Tuesday said all Britons, except business travelers, should be banned from travel within the 14-nation European Union during major soccer tournaments.
Such draconian measures will not be put into effect, but the British government might well follow Germany’s example in future and place passport and travel restrictions on hooligan suspects.
It would be a step in the right direction.
AUF WIEDERSEHEN
Matthaeus, 39, played his world-record 150th international game Tuesday, but it was definitely his last in a glittering 20-year career during which he led Germany to its 1990 World Cup triumph.
If he thinks he will be welcomed back to Major League Soccer’s New York/New Jersey MetroStars with open arms, however, he is mistaken.
The MetroStars have won four of five games since Matthaeus left for Euro 2000, and the players now see him as more of a problem than a solution.
All of which leaves Coach Octavio Zambrano with a dilemma: How does he tell Matthaeus not to come back? Or tell MLS that he doesn’t want to use him?
INCITE INSIGHT
English fans have not been the only ones to cause problems at Euro 2000. Turks, Belgians, Italians and others also have gotten in on the act, and sometimes, it appears, they have been put up to it.
Belgian police are investigating a Dutch photographer who allegedly offered money to English fans in Charleroi to cause a disturbance last Friday and also are looking into reports that a Dutch television crew gave firecrackers to Belgian fans in Brussels Monday and asked them to act in a violent manner.
FAREWELL, MY UNLOVELY
Look for Germany’s coach, Erich Ribbeck, to step down today in the wake of his country’s worst performance in an international event.
“There was no fighting spirit,” Ribbeck said after the loss to Portugal. “It didn’t work, and I accept full responsibility.”
The future of England’s coach, Kevin Keegan, is more problematic. He is under contract through the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, and would have had that contract extended through 2006 had England reached the European Championship final.
Instead, he will find himself earning every bit of his $1.47-million-a-year salary while critics attack him and his players as they try to qualify for 2002. Then again, the English soccer federation might just swallow Keegan’s contract and appoint the next man in line, former England captain Bryan Robson, as coach right now.
It couldn’t hurt.
ONE FINAL NOTE
The award for the best description of the English hooligans goes to columnist David Thomas of England’s Daily Mail, who wrote:
“Other countries are not like this. As a matter of fact, young Britons of both sexes are the most drunken, drug-taking, promiscuous, criminal, pregnant, fattest and least-educated people in Europe.
“It’s all very well politicians preventing hooligans leaving this country, but what are we going to do with them while they’re here? And what are we going to do to save the country and the culture that spawned them?”
