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Soccer fans fear blight on the game in World Cup countdown
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 London,
Feb 28: With soccer having been plagued by cheats, betting scams
and racist crowd trouble over the past year, fans of the game are
fearing the World Cup could be shamed by the same problems.
Hopes, dreams and anxieties will increase as the final 100-day
countdown to the June 9 kickoff in Munich, Germany, begins tomorrow,
when the first batch of World Cup warm-up games gives everyone a
taste of the quadrennial championship.
Coaches and players from 32 nations are dreaming of getting their
hands on the famous trophy at the July 9 final in Berlin and organizers
hope for a trouble-free championship full of thrills and goals.
Now comes the reality.
Although fans can't wait to see Brazil's Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry
of France, Argentina's Lionel Messi and England's Wayne Rooney displaying
their skills at Germany 2006, the world's most popular sport is
plagued by problems on and off the field.
The game's ruling bodies are struggling to deal with violent, racist
fans, match-fixing, betting scams, players who cheat, unscrupulous
owners, coaches and agents and a widening chasm between the game's
rich and poor.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter has been saying for months that soccer
has the impact to "make the world better place."
Despite a history of bringing political foes to the same soccer
field and overcoming social disadvantages, soccer also has been
the excuse for the worst in human behaviour.
World Cup organizers know there is the potential for major violence
across Germany if the notorious fan elements from England, the Netherlands
and the host nation clash, or if the supporters groups responsible
for nazi salutes and other racial provocations at games show up
from Spain, Italy and eastern Europe.
Fan organizers estimate 1,00,000 English supporters will travel
to the world cup, although police have issued travel bans on more
than 3,000 known troublemakers to ensure they don't go.
Barcelona's Cameroon striker Samuel Eto'o was on the brink of walking
off the field after Real Zaragoza fans berated him with racial taunts
on Saturday. In the latest outbreaks of violence on Sunday, rioting
fans forced the referee to abandoned a game in Turkey and supporters
threw rocks and started fires during a match in Greece.
On the field, soccer appears to have been hit by an epidemic of
cheating.
Players dive to get penalties or opponents sent off and, with referee
standards seemingly at an all time low, the match officials are
being blamed for the chaos on the field.
Pierluigi Collina, a retired match official most people wish was
still in the game, says it's not the fault of the men with the whistles.
"A player who dives does not offend the referee," he
said. "He offends his fellow professionals because he is cheating
on them. If he manages to win a penalty and it changes the result
of a whole season, even a career, that is a disaster for the players."
Collina believes unless FIFA gives referees a clear mandate to
show the red card to the cheats, they will continue to get away
with it.
The host nation also was hit by a major match-fixing scandal a
year ago when German referee Robert Hoyzer admitted taking bribes
from Croatian gambler Ante Sapina and was jailed for 29 months.
The Hoyzer case was a major embarrassment to the German Federation,
which will be dreading a repeat at the World Cup. Gambling syndicates
in Europe and the far east make huge amounts of cash out of the
game and the World Cup could be a target.
Whatever happens on the field, the fans should enjoy top-quality
facilities at 12 grounds that have been either upgraded or newly
constructed.
The 80,000-seat Olympic stadium in Berlin has had a major refurbishment
and will stage the final. The opening game will be at Bayern Munich's
new 70,000-capacity Allianz arena.
Although a consumer group has reported that four of the grounds
lacked adequate fire safety measures and escape routes, organizers
said the findings were unreliable.
Five of the grounds were used at last year's Confederations Cup
and, although the moveable roof leaked during a thunderstorm at
the final in Frankfurt's Waldstadion, the fans were impressed.
Getting into them may be more of a problem.
In Germany, famed for efficiency, ticketing always seems to stumble.
This time, the 3.3 million tickets will be personalized, creating
the threat of long queues at the stadiums with organizers planning
checks to see if the person with the ticket is the person on the
ticket.
The idea is to eliminate stolen or counterfeit tickets, as well
as keeping ticket brokers or others from exorbitantly inflating
the price.
A lawsuit has been filed in Frankfurt by one ticket holder who
bought his on e-bay. World Cup organizers, who have warned that
sales on internet sites could turn out to be fraudulent, have refused
to put his name on the ticket making it unusable.
Bureau Report
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=278788&ssid=90&sid=SPO
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