Rowdy Fans Booted Off Jet in Wales
Rowdy fans of Scottish champion Glasgow Celtic on Friday forced a chartered passenger jet to make an unscheduled landing in Cardiff, Wales, where six of the troublemakers were arrested by police.
The aircraft was en route to Scotland from Spain, where Celtic clinched a place in the final 16 of the UEFA Cup at the expense of Celta Vigo on Thursday night.
The pilot radioed that “unruly passengers” among the 148 on board were causing a disturbance and allegedly had assaulted a flight attendant trying to calm them down.
The plane landed safely and resumed its journey after the hooligans had been removed.
USA-Japan
Once again, and for the third time in recent weeks, word of an upcoming international match involving the United States comes not from U.S. Soccer but from its opponent.
Japan announced Friday that it will play the U.S. “somewhere on the west coast of America” on March 29, one week before the start of the Major League Soccer’s eighth season.
Earlier, Argentina said it will play the U.S. in Miami on Feb. 8 and Jamaica said it would host the American team in Kingston on Feb. 12. Neither of those games has yet been mentioned by U.S. Soccer.
Spurs to Move?
The chairman of Tottenham Hotspur warned Friday that the English Premier League team might abandon the White Hart Lane home that it has occupied in north London since 1898 unless the government improves the neighborhood.
“This area has gone downhill,” Daniel Levy said. “There’s been no central government intervention to stop the decline.
“We haven’t set a time limit, but if we find another suitable site, somewhere financially viable that the fans would be comfortable with, that would be a catalyst upon which we’d have to turn around and say we’ve had enough.
“Either there’s going to be significant [government] commitment or we’re off.”
More Drug Tests
Gerhard Aigner, the chief executive of UEFA, European soccer’s ruling body, said Friday that random drug testing in the competitions it oversees will be increased by 30% next season and will be extended to include youth and female players.
“In the past, we have tended to test the same teams as they progress through a competition and so the testing is concentrated on the high-profile matches,” Aigner said.
“From next season, we intend to spread the testing across the board and include players in the earlier rounds of the competitions.”
Last season, only one player out of 548 tested positive, and so far only one has done so this season.
UEFA Cup Draw
The draw for the fourth round and the quarterfinals of the UEFA Cup was held in Nyon, Switzerland, on Friday, with fourth-round matches scheduled for Feb. 20 and 27 and the quarterfinals for March 13 and 20.
The quarterfinal pairings will be as follows:
* Glasgow Celtic-VfB Stuttgart winner vs. Auxerre-Liverpool winner.
* Malaga-AEK Athens winner vs. Hertha Berlin-Boavista winner.
* FC Porto-Denizlispor winner vs. Anderlecht-Panathinaikos winner.
* Slavia Prague-Besiktas winner vs. Lazio-Wisla Krakow winner.
Quick Pass
The Argentine club San Lorenzo won the inaugural Copa Sudamericana, 4-0 on aggregate, after defeating Atletico Nacional of Colombia by that margin in Colombia and then playing to a 0-0 tie in front of 50,000 in Buenos Aires.
