2006 FIFA World Cup

Top Tens Outbursts

Roy Keane

No list would be complete without Roy Keane's bust-up with Mick McCarthy in Saipan four years ago, a controversy that divided the nation and inspired musicals. An exasperated Keane announced he would quit international football after the World Cup having expressed his dissatisfaction with Ireland's preparations.

When clear-the-air talks with Mick McCarthy descended into a "slanging match", McCarthy sent Keane packing. "You've seen the training pitch and I'm not being a prima donna," said Keane.

"Training pitch, travel arrangements, getting through the bloody airport when we were leaving, it's the combination of things. I would never say 'that's the reason or this is the reason,' but enough is enough."

Luciano Gaucci

It was the club-versus-country battle Jung Hwan-Ahn could never win, but he was astounded by the reaction to his winner for Korea against Italy in 2002. The president of his Italian club, Perugia's Luciano Gaucci, decided Ahn had behaved insolently.

Gaucci raged: "I am a nationalist and I regard such behaviour not only as an affront to Italian pride but also an offence to a country which two years ago opened its doors to him.'' He sacked Ahn who has since rebuilt his career in Japanese and French football.

John Aldridge

The Republic of Ireland striker wanted in on the World Cup action 12 years ago; a reluctant fourth official was having communication problems with the referee. The result? A venomous Scouse tongue-lashing and the viperish jabbing of an Aldridge finger at fourth official Renato Marsiglia of Brazil.

When he got on, 35-year-old Aldridge took his anger out on Mexico, scoring the Republic of Ireland's consolation in a 2-1 defeat.

Alf Ramsey

"We don't swap shirts with animals,'' was Alf Ramsey's contribution to British-Argentinean relations. It may not have been well received in South America, but his words and England's 1-0 win against Argentina in the 1966 quarter-finals meant Ramsey could do little wrong that summer.

His outburst came after that particularly testy quarter-final in which Argentina captain Antonio Rattin was sent off. Ramsey was alarmed his players were about to give their England shirts to the opposition and ordered them not to do so.

Prince Fahid

The Kuwaiti FA chief was so outraged at France scoring a fourth goal against his country in their 1982 World Cup meeting that he left the stands and entered the pitch. He approached the referee, remonstrating by claiming the Kuwait players had heard a whistle from the stands and stopped playing, thinking it had come from the man in black.

Russian referee Miroslav Stupar amazingly went along with the prince and disallowed the goal, although France would later score again and win 4-1. Kuwait were later fined o8,000 by FIFA for Fahid's intervention.

Luiz Felipe Scolari

The Brazil coach had just seen his players lift the World Cup, and he chose the occasion to lambast the legendary Pele, a frequent critic of his team selection. Pele, a Romario fan, failed to persuade Scolari to pick the veteran striker and the coach's decision proved justified.

The outburst was nevertheless remarkable. Scolari said: "Pele knows nothing about football. He has done nothing as a coach and his analysis turns out to be always wrong. If you want to win a big title, listen to what Pele says, then do the opposite.'' Pele replied, claiming Scolari was attention-seeking.

Jack Charlton

In the same game as Aldridge's rant (see above), Republic of Ireland coach Jack Charlton wrote himself into World Cup legend. Or at least this list. Charlton might have been feeling the heat - it was after all in the high 90s and Ireland were trailing to Mexico - but when he tried and was refused permission to pass water bottles to his players during the game, he boiled over.

Like Aldridge, he unleashed both barrels on any officials within reach, and although his words were indecipherable, they screamed a universal language. Big Jack's goat was got.

Claudio Caniggia

The veteran Argentinean was waiting for his chance to be involved in the 2002 group match against Sweden when he took offence to a decision by referee Ali Bujsaim. The substitute, sat on the Argentina bench, took offence verbally and loudly unfortunately. It led not to his first World Cup suspension - Caniggia missed the 1990 final because of a ban.

Johan Cruyff

The silent rant heard the world over, Cruyff's decision to boycott the 1978 World Cup was one largely of actions rather than words, but it had the desired effect of drawing attention to human rights abuses in host country Argentina. He famously refused to play for Holland - despite the Dutch public campaigning for a change of mind at the finals - because of his and wife Danny's opposition to the tyrannical General Jorge Videla. Everyone took notice - Cruyff's absence was keenly felt.

Diego Maradona

Diego Maradona had been newly voted - by supporters - FIFA's greatest player of all time. Pele was second - just where Maradona likes him to finish in such polls. The pair do not get along, and at the 2002 World Cup, Maradona made that quite clear. "Pele is a great politician,'' said the Argentinean.

"Some people say he has had a part in keeping me out of the FIFA family. He can do that if he wants. He cares about me as much as I don't care about him.

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The Gatekeepers

It's not hard to see why FIFA, soccer's governing body, chose Munich, Germany, to host the 2006 World Cup's opening ceremonies and match. The city's 69,000-seat soccer stadium, Allianz Arena, is a spectacle itself. Finished in April 2005 at a cost of _280 million, the orb-like structure's fascade radiates color thanks to three thousand foil panels that can each glow red, white or blue.

The stadium also showcases hooligan-addled FIFA's efforts when it comes to safety and security. Take the automated access system, which can admit those 69,000 fans in an hour and a half, funnel supporters of opposing teams to separate sections, track occupancy of those sections in real time, block tickets in the event of theft or loss, and regulate turnstiles to ensure orderly exits.

For the designer of that access system, SkiData of Salzburg, Austria, the World Cup is no less of a showcase event.

The company, which is owned by Geneva-listed Kudelski, a Swiss technology group, hopes the tournament's exposure will entice more customers, notably North American ones, to upgrade to its ticketing gear.

For sports arenas, SkiData's flagship technology is called Handshake. The product is deployed at high-profile venues around the globe, including four 2006 World Cup stadiums: Hamburg, Kaiserslautern, Munich and Stuttgart. Handshake connects a hub server to a plethora of access points throughout the arena.

In Munich, for example, there are 240 checkpoints, including 70 handheld readers and 15 VIP gates. SkiData touts Handshake's ability to control crowd flow and keep stadium staff apprised of occupancy.

Information, for example, can be sent from Handshake to phones or PDAs carried by security personnel. "They're always informed where people are and from where they have to be evacuated," says a SkiData spokesman.

Handshake's capabilities were shown off during the 2004 European Football Championships in Portugal. If its track record holds up in Germany this June, SkiData has a ripe business opportunity to attack.

In March, FIFA's Technical and Development Committee gave the world's soccer venues a proverbial "red card" overall on safety matters, pointing the finger in particular at Africa, Asia and Latin America. Inadequate safety, FIFA said, could prevent a country from hosting qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

India Muslims worried over youths gone 'football mad'

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, July 1, 2006 (AFP) - Hardline Muslims in southern India have launched a campaign to dissuade youths from watching too much World Cup action, saying they had "gone mad" over football.

"Wherever you go, you see (youths) wearing jerseys of various teams. It's like idol worship which our religion doesn't promote in any form," said Sattar Pathallur, secretary of the Sunni Students Federation in Malappuram district of Kerala state.

Some 63 percent of the 3.62 million population of the district are Muslims, many of whom prefer football to cricket, India's national sport. The "youth and students are behaving as if they had gone mad," said Pathallur.

"I firmly believe that there is a conspiracy to divert the attention of Muslim youth to an unproductive exercise."

The organisation has been holding religious lessons, rallies and public meetings to dissuade youths from following the sport too keenly. "We are not against football. But we are worried about the soccer mania gripping our people. It's unprecedented," said Hameed Ali Shihab Thangal, regional president of the federation. Others criticised the Muslim body. "It's absurd. These people are talking nonsense.

Malappuram people are great fans of soccer. It's natural for them to watch their great heroes in action," said schoolteacher Labeed Areekode, also a football player. Football fans are not impressed with the federation's campaign.

"The critics of soccer are scoring only own goals as nobody is going to listen to them," said Najimudeen Koya, a World Cup enthusiast. Others said the hardliners were also worried that the sport was becoming increasingly popular among women.

World Cup Widows

by Tom Humphries

The Swiss Tourist Board are beaming their ads around Europe. Here according to the Herald Tribune is the gist: its ads feature brawny lumberjacks and a come-hither dairyman, a real-life farmer and Mr Switzerland 2005 with an invitation to soccer widows to visit the Alps in summertime.

Few would confuse them with an official sponsor, but the link is unmistakable: "Dear girls, why not escape this summer's World Cup to a country where men spend less time on football and more time on you?"

And this is the nation of sickos that kept us out of the World Cup? Let's invade them. Annoying as they are the Swiss may well have put their very efficient digits on the nub of one of the World Cup's greatest problems. Whether you travel to the tournament or not there is a crushing downside to the World Cup experience.

There is a good portion of the world which deliberately and cussedly turns its face away from the event and places its hands over its ears and sings loudly: "La- la-la. I'm-notlistening." It would be crass, and politically incorrect, to generalize but generally these people are women. To be fair there are undoubtedly troubled souls out there who will claim to be World Cup Widowers. Nature plays the cruellest tricks. These are oul wans trapped in men's bodies. (It should be noted that a recent survey conducted by Duracell indicated that 94 per cent of men would never switch the team they supported no matter how bad things got, but 52 per cent of them would divorce if things weren't going to plan. One hundred per cent were baffled as to what the survey had to with batteries but most thought Bill Clinton had been a smart man to call his daughter Chelsea.)

Anyway, not to brag, but I speak as one who has had an ongoing involvement with a woman. In fact it was this woman whom we called - in a state of mild, but forgivable, inebriation - from New York City in June of 1994.

The purpose of the call was to say hello and to gauge the precise levels of national hysteria provoked by the man-walks-on-the-bloody-moon type moment in history that was Ireland beating Italy in Giants Stadium earlier that day.

The woman was baffled. She said that she had been driving to Wexford and that she "didn't have the radio on" while doing so.

The plague to be avoided in the next five to six weeks is not England fans. It is not football. It is not jingoistic British tabloids.

It is the volcanic outpouring of articles about the fate of the "World Cup Widow." These are pieces of literature which you should not let your servant read, let alone your wife. Let us, in the spirit of noble dissent down through the ages just say, down with this sort of thing.

Golf Widows we feel genuine compassion for. We would seriously consider taking part in a Telethon to eradicate the problem. In fact, in this the year of the Ryder Cup uber-bore we would implore Bono to become involved at a serious level.

However World Cup Widows have, as my therapist says, "very little to be whingeing about." They are beneath our compassion.

One month, every four years? Is it too much to ask? One month given to restoring some childhood romance to a brain which is befuddled with worry over miles per gallon and the meaning of Miche l McDowell? Why begrudge us? It's just 64 matches. Five thousand, seven hundred and sixty minutes of football, not including half times and pre- and post-match analysis. Allow half an hour there for each game, presuming we have the right to record group games which are played simultaneously.

That's just another 1,920 minutes of trimmings. That's 7,680 minutes in total.

For the sake of argument we will allow 600 minutes for pouring delightedly through this magazine and 60 minutes a day for following World Cup coverage in your newspaper of choice, which is 1,860 minutes over the 31 days. In all then we have a media commitment of 2,460 minutes.

Thus, once every four years, in a very intense period of spiritual renewal, we ask for just over 10,140 minutes of grace. In other words, if you spaced out the time devoted to faithful observance over those four years (or 1,460 days), just under seven minutes a day would be devoted to the World Cup Maximum.

For this the supplicant is rewarded by the acrid scent of burning martyr wafting in from the front garden as the World Cup Widow pushes the rusty old blade mower back and forth past the window while wearing an expression of noble but conspicuous suffering.

As Brian Clough once said, it only takes a second to score a goal. It takes more than a second to shut the window and draw the curtains. Somewhere, somebody is going to miss a goal being scored.

The victimhood cult of the World Cup Widow, devoid as it is of any aspirations towards parity of esteem, has given rise to the dangerous notion of reparation . In this the year of the great SSIA orgy, the twin concepts of guilt and reparation are dangerous things to be fooling around with. To prevent overheating in the economy the government would do well to provide subsidies for gift wrapped power mowers from May through June.

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Marriage of interests

by Tom Humphries

Here's how they line out.

Puma: Italy, Poland, Paraguay, Ivory Coast, Iran, Angola, Ghana, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia. Nike: Brazil, Holland, Mexico, Portugal, US, Croatia, Australia, South Korea. Adidas: Argentina, Germany, France, Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, Japan. Umbro: England, Sweden. Lotto: Ukraine, Serbia & Montenegro. Marathon: Ecuador. Joma: Costa Rica.

This means that Puma have the most teams but Adidas and Nike have the best chance of winning. If you like England you should know that Beckham is Adidas but Rooney is Nike and Owen is Umbro and Jamie Carragher is Puma and Rio Ferdinand is Over-rated. Adidas are official sponsors of the World Cup, a privilege for which they paid between 130 million and 150 million. Nike are cuter.

They own Brazil. And for all his spikey independence and commendable intolerance of orange bibs, Nike own the corporate shill Eric Cantona.

Nike are ambush marketers but Fifa will never chastise them. This time out Fifa has 15 top line sponsoring partners who paid like Adidas did. Next time they will have just six. They'll pay 1300 million each. Fifa wouldn't like to cross Nike off the list of potentially interested parties. (By the way, in case you've got your SSIA money handy, one advertising hording at one World Cup game will, cost you 1500,000. To think that Davy Keogh said Hello for free all those years.) Ditto Carlsberg.

Although Budweiser is the official World Cup beer and the only one available in stadia in the home of beer, Carlsberg have been clever and produced an ad featuring heroes from England's 1966 World Cup winning team (geezers like Bobby and Jack Charlton and Alan Ball ) as well as extras like Stuart Pearce, Bryan Robson, Peter Shilton, Des Walker, Terry Butcher, Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley and Peter Reid.

They are playing in a park game. They run riot. They celebrate in the local. Carlsberg don't do pub teams but if they did . . . Budweiser don't like it but Fifa have to put up with it. In fact in April Fifa lost a court case in Germany where they sought to patent the world's FOOTBALL WORLD CUP 2006.

However Fifa did succeed in suing the owner of a Burger King franchise in Israel for giving away free World Cup tickets as part of a promotion. Guess that rules him out of one of the o300 million sponsorship deals.

Spare a thought for the little town of Tresbeck which is trying to hold a sponsor-free World Cup celebration. No free beer than?

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