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Soccer Thugs Riot! (Not)

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German officials had two big World Cup fears: a humiliating home-field loss and soccer-related hooliganism and neo-Nazi violence against foreign visitors. German hopes got spiked by a spunky Italian team that beat France in the final July 9, but the violence level turned out to be surprisingly low. Sure, 429 brawlers were arrested after a Germany-Poland match. But unless you were on the receiving end of French star Zinedine Zidane's ill-timed tete-butt, the 2006 World Cup was indeed a safe place to be. Which prognosticators were on-target about the chances for violence, and who deserves a yellow card for crying wolf?— Stanislav Budnitsky

"During the World Cup, everyone can feel safe wherever he goes in Germany."
— German interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, to The Times (June 10)
"We have seen on radical right and neo-Nazi websites they plan to target black people. All of East Germany is unsafe."
— Jonas Endrias, vice president of the International League of Human Rights, to The Times (June 2)
"There's a lot of rivalry between Germans and Poles, and big potential for violence."
— Geoff Pearson of Liverpool University, to the Mirror (March 17)

Non-white visitors should "avoid visiting small and midsize towns in Brandenburg and elsewhere in eastern Germany, or they may not leave with their lives."
— former German government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye, in the New York Times (June 4)
"I would not write off Germany as a racist country, [but] I would stop short of saying there is any place you absolutely can't go to."
— Celal Altun, secretary general of the Turkish Council, to AP (June 2)
"48 matches and we have none classified as high risk — the future is positive."
— Horst Schmidt, German organizing committee vice president, to AP (June 4)
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