World of Sport

“I DO think we’ll get beyond the quarter-finals this time,” said England fan John Burke (pictured), from Skelmersdale. “I’d like to think so, anyway. I think my girlfriend would like us to get knocked out so I could come home, but she’s going to have to wait until July 10!”
John and his mate Mark Perry, from Wigan, are travelling round Germany together in a six-berth camper van, seeing the sights, sleeping on campsites and planning a trip that will last as long as England stay in the World Cup. And maybe, just maybe, that stay will take in the World Cup final.
“I think we’re always slow when we start tournaments,” Mark said. “The loss of Michael Owen has worried me, and you see how well Germany and some of the other teams are playing, and you’ve got to try to pitch yourself against those teams. But I think we’d be up for a game against the Portuguese. I’d like to see us in the semis, and I’d like to see us in the final, but the quarters are a big step for us.”
A big step indeed. Of the six World Cup finals England have played in since they won the tournament in 1966, three have ended at the quarter-final stage. Sven-Goran Eriksson’s side went into this tournament 10th in the FIFA rankings. A last-eight spot was the yardstick. Beat Portugal in Gelsenkirchen tomorrow and reach the last four, and a mediocre campaign will suddenly become a great one.
And although large sections of the media have been critical of the quality of England’s performances, fellow fan Mark Perryman insists there is plenty to be positive about.
He said: “The performances haven’t been spectacular so far – nobody would pretend that – but the point is that we could be in the position of the Czech Republic, who had a very strong team and went out in the first round. We topped our group, and we’ve only concedeed two goals.
“England at their best can beat Portugal, but they’re going to have to be at their best. Then you’re into a semi-final, and it’s likely to be Brazil. When you’re into a semi-final, anything is possible. Rooney’s improving with every game, and I’m looking forward to Gary Neville coming back, because we really miss his creativity and his ability to cross the ball.
“The important thing is that we’re there, we’re still in the tournament. We could be back home. There are some very strong nations who are back home already. If you ask the fans in the stadium, they will say: ‘OK, it’s not great, but we’re getting the results.’”
And if you ask Mark Perry and John Burke in their camper van what they have made of the tournament, they will wax lyrical about the friendliness of their hosts.
John said: “When we arrived in Germany, we got a little bit lost and couldn’t find a campsite. We asked for some directions, and after 10 minutes of this German guy trying to explain which way to go, he just said: ‘I’ll take you there.’ He must have driven us eight miles to the campsite, and then waited until we got booked in – because he would have been prepared to take us to another site if we hadn’t got in!
“And when you’re at the Fan Fests, there’s no segregation between supporters and you’re all in together. It’s such a carnival atmosphere. Yes, there have been a few little scuffles, but it’s just a few people who have got drunk.
“We got invited to this World Cup; that was the beauty of it. At tournaments like this in the past, the message has always been: If you haven’t got tickets, don’t turn up. This time, the message is: It doesn’t matter if you haven’t got tickets, you can still come and have fun. From the second we arrived in Germany, people have been so friendly.
“It’s been enjoyable every second of the way. And I don’t think it will stop now. Football is much more of a fan-friendly event than it was in the 1970s and 80s.”
The duo in the camper van are planning to stay and enjoy the party a little longer. Whether they do will be down to Beckham and Co. It’s over to you, boys.

NO sign of Coleen at the Brenner’s Park Hotel in Baden Baden last night; just a group of journalists – who you may or may not have recognised from their national newspaper picture bylines – discussing where to go for dinner.
All of thyem had mobile phones clamped to their ears: none of them looked as if they were having much fun. Staying in the same five-star hotel as the England players’ wives and girlfriends may sound glamorous, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be a barrel of laughs.
Also outside the hotel was a photographer, desperately bartering with the suited and booted door staff for an exclusive picture of some wife or girlfriend; a picture he was never going to get. Ah, the pressure of covering England at this World Cup.

It has struck me that the journalists following England are staying at a better hotel than some of the teams at the tournament did, and it’s a fact I find a little hard to swallow. The Brenner’s Park (pictured above), with its manicured lawns, its steam baths and its swimming pool, easily outstrips the Holiday Inn in Heidelberg, where the Costa Rica squad were based. And I know it’s a question of finance, but I still find myself asking: who is more important to the World Cup – Martin Samuel or Costa Rica? I know only one of them qualified by beating Canada home and away, and it wasn’t the bearded chap from the Times.
Perhaps those journalists need a bit of luxury at the momet, though. The job of reporting on the national team for a national newspaper has got harder over the last few days. As England have progressed, Sven-Goran Eriksson has felt more confident about throwing early-tournament criticism back in the journalists’ faces. An England win over Portugal in Gelsenkirchen tomorrow is only going to make those reporters’ jobs harder – however badly England have played at this World Cup (and they haven’t played well), no reporter will be able to brush aside the wave of national pride that would come with a place in the semi-finals. And by the sound of things, Sven is only going to get stroppier the further England go.

Those journalists couldn’t have picked a more beautiful place to suffer, though. Baden Baden is a lovely spa town – think Bath but with more millionaires (the fountain at Augustplatz, in the town centre, is pictured above). And the joke about the place being so good they named it twice actually has a ring of truth about it. When the town of Baden was divided along religious lines in 1525, the Catholic part became known unofficially as Baden Baden. The name was officially adopted in the eraly 1930s to distinguish it from lesser spa towns in Austria and Switzerland called Baden.
Perhaps the touch of snobbery that inspired the double Baden has also created an aversion to public transport. That’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why the railway station is three miles from the centre of town. Does nobody travel by train in this part of Germany?
The England team are even further out of town than that, up in the Black Forest hills a few miles to the south at the luxurious baroque castle that is the Schlosshotel Buhlerhohe. The cheapest room is a bargain at just 280 euros a night – that’s about £180 – although the presidential suite will set you back 2,200 euros a night, which is about £1,320 (you won’t be surprised to discover that the whole hotel is booked up for the weekend of the World Cup final, though – good to see someone at the FA is planning ahead). The management there were so accommodating to England’s needs that they ordered a king-size bed for Liverpool’s Peter Crouch (giving rise to the chant: ‘He’s big, he’s red, his feet stick out the bed, Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch.’)

But however comfortable big Peter is in his big bed, I doubt if he’s having as good a time as the England fans camping out in nearby Achern. The supporters have been enjoying the sun outside their tents, with their tops off (as is obligatory for all male England fans), chatting, laughing and drinking beer. Flags hang outside the tents (as pictured above); I have even seen a gazebo with a roof in the design of the St George’s cross.
“It’s been a great atmosphere out here,” said fan Stephen Henry, from Northwich. “We’re going home on Sunday, and I don’t want to go back! I just hope that England aren’t coming home that day as well.”
There may be one or two national newspaper reporters with mixed feelings on that one, Stephen. But that’s their problem, not yours.

THOSE of you who have been trawling the internet desperate for your next fix of Sepp Blatter’s thoughts will be glad to know that FIFA’s official website has finally come up with the goods. Well, sort of.
FIFA’s president has once again opened his heart in what is described as a “candid” interview. Given that he was clearly so keen to speak out, I can only assume that his interviewer forgot to ask why so many tickets for this World Cup have ended up on the black market.
Amid the usual platitudes (”As happens every four years, the entire world is holding its breath and football lovers everywhere are out in force…”), it is Sepp’s comments on the standard of refereeing at the tournament that have attracted the most attention.
“I’ve noted that instructions aren’t being followed consistently from one match to another,” he said. “When a coach complains to me that shirt-pulling earned his player a yellow card one night and nothing for his team’s group rivals the next, how am I supposed to respond?”
Presumably by telling said coach how the entire world is holding its breath and that football lovers everywhere are out in force… Anyway, sorry Sepp, you were saying…
“And then there are the tackles from behind I’ve seen go unpunished and the violent conduct that has escaped sanction, not to mention the serious errors made in applying the rules.”
Sepp sounds not so much like the FIFA president as a disgruntled fan calling Five Live’s ‘6-0-6′ phone-in to complain about how his team’s defeat was entirely the fault of the referee. (I remember Adrian Chiles once asking for fans to ring in if a refereeing decision had unfairly benefited their team. No one took him up on the offer, and the calls claiming “the ref’s cost us today, mate” continued to flow in like beach effluent.)
And just like the sort of disgruntled fan who can never admit to being wrong even when faced with a huge pile of evidence, Sepp has to perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to explain why there are no teams from outside Europe and South America in the last eight. Before the tournament began, Sepp outlined how the game had become much more global since the World Cup was last held in (West) Germany in 1974. “Back in 1974, only Europe and South America counted,” he said at the time. “Today, teams from around the world can play a part.”
So how come they’ve all been eliminated? Well, after waxing on about how the Ivory Coast were in a difficult group (fair enough) and how African goalkeepers lag behind “in terms of technique” (Tunisia’s 40-year-old Ali Boumnijel – a keeper with the reaction time of a sloth or a 50-year-old Peter Shilton – springs to mind), Sepp once again throws a sly dagger in the direction of the referees. Asked why no African or Australasian team made the last eight, Sepp said: “Sometimes they didn’t have much luck with the marginal decisions.”
Now I know that one of Sepp’s great missions as FIFA president is to level out the balance of power in world football, and that a consequence of that levelling would see more teams from Africa and Australasia get further in the World Cup. But is he really suggesting, in his comment on “marginal decisions”, that referees should give certain teams a bit more help? No, it must be my imagination. It’s interesting, though, that Sepp didn’t get half as angry about some of the outrageous refereeing that allowed South Korea to reach the 2002 World Cup semi-finals.
As for South Korea’s first-round elimination this time, Sepp said: “It’s not a good thing for Asian football, and I find it a shame, but I consider it to be an accident.” With the final word of that statement, a chill runs down world football’s spine.
Sepp dodges the final question of the interview – asking him who will win the World Cup – with a body swerve of which any politician would have been proud. (He suggests it will be the winner of tomorrow’s Germany v Argentina quarter-final without actually saying so.) In another interview, his criticism of Sven-Goran Eriksson for playing only one striker against Ecuador suggests he won’t be cheering on England in Gelsenkirchen on Saturday.
Thanks for your thoughts there, Sepp. Now, before you go, I’ve a quick question for you about ticket distribution at this World Cup….
Click. Brrrrrr.

I’VE been in Germany for three weeks now, and seem to have spent roughly half that time on trains. While my decision to base myself in Frankfurt and travel everywhere else by rail has allowed me to be flexible and spontaneous during this trip, it hasn’t half knackered me out. I’m grateful for a couple of rest days in the competition just to get the chance to catch up on sleep.
Thank goodness, then, for the Deutsche Bahn rail network, on which I have relied so heavily to get me around Germany. The country’s nationalised network has been pretty efficient – despite having to handle millions of extra passengers during the World Cup.
Yes, there have been times when it has creaked under the pressure: almost everybody – passengers and crew – on the train back from Munich after the Brazil-Australia group match looked frazzled and ready to explode, and there have been a couple of trips where I have spent four hours huddled on the floor between carriages because there were no seats. But that’s the chance you take when you decide to be spontaneous and not book a seat in advance, so I can’t complain.
The one thing that has enabled me to go wherever I fancy in Germany pretty much on a whim has been Deutsche Bahn’s brilliant World Cup ticket, known as the Weltmeister Pass. For £255 (Sorry, this is starting to read like an advert, I know), fans could buy a ticket before the World Cup allowing them to travel anywhere on the rail network during the tournament. I’ve kept that ticket with me at all times as I’ve made last-minute decisions to switch trains and destinations.
As a result, I’ve now been to 10 of the 12 World Cup cities following last night’s visit to Hanover. Only Berlin (where I’ll be on Friday when Germany play Argentina) and Dortmund (where the winners of that match will face Italy or Ukraine in the semi-final) have yet to be burdened by my presence. It’s been great to get a little snapshot of Germany by visiting all these different places, and yet with such a busy itinerary, I feel as though I haven’t had time to get a feel for any of them. When your visit to a city begins and ends with the triangle of railway station, football stadium and ‘Fan Fest’ park, you’re bound to miss a lot.

Nonetheless, I have been able to form some basic impressions. Munich reminds me of London; an exciting but overcrowded city which seems to be full of permanently-stressed out people doing their best to keep up with the pace of life. Leipzig is grand but slightly old-fashioned in its attitudes, and hasn’t embraced the cosmopolitan feel of the World Cup in the same way that other, more forward-looking cities have. It’s got a very stylish railway station, though (pictured above).

Hamburg manages to be both cool and seedy at the same time; perhaps something to be expected of a city which is both a favourite hang-out for media types and notorious for its brothels (it’s not for me to say whether the two are connected). Gelsenkirchen and Kaiserslautern are both unexceptional; small cities who have made it on to the World Cup stage for the quality of their football stadiums and little else. Cologne has a strong radical studenty feel (or at least it did when England weren’t there) and has more examples of stunning, colourful and artistic graffiti than any other city I’ve visited in Germany. Its massive Dom, pictured above, dominates the city skyline.

Nuremberg’s dark past hangs over it like a permanent black cloud, and yet the city is full of beautiful churches and other buildings, such as the Handwerkerhof, pictured above. Stuttgart feels a bit like Manchester, with a mixture of the old and the modern. Nowhere is this more striking that at the Fan Fest in the city’s centre’s Schlossplatz, where the Baroque Neues Schloss local government building at one end of the square contrasts with the glass cube-shaped Galerie de Stadt Stuttgart building at the other.
I liked Hanover, despite its confusing spelling (’Hanover’ in English, ‘Hannover’ in German: the most bewildering double spelling of a place name in different languages since someone in Wales decided that ‘Flint’ should be spelt ‘Fflint’). The football stadium isn’t on a bit of scrubland miles out of the city, as some are. Instead, I reached it via a short trip on the underground and then a walk down a typically English tree-lined street bustling with France and Spain fans.

But Frankfurt is probably the city I have got to know best. Huge skyscrapers, expensive resturants in the city centre, and cheap cafes near the railway station, outside which a giant stage has featured Christian rock concerts almost every day throughout the tournament, Then, of course, there’s the wonderful Main Arena – the most imaginative setting for a big screen in any of the World Cup’s host cities. Watching Germany’s game against Poland next to the River Main with a few thousand Germans as the sun set will be one of my fondest memories of this World Cup. That was the night German pride at this tournament really took off.
These are only snapshots, first impressions, and maybe I have done some cities an injustice. I’d love to come back and see Germany properly some day. But not just yet; I’ve got trips to Berlin (Friday) and Gelsenkirchen (Saturday) to watch the football first…

NOW this was more like a World Cup party; France and Spain fans mingling freely in Hanover, dressed in replica shirts, flags painted on cheeks, singing their hearts out for the lads.
Except that something didn’t quite fit. France and Spain have each brought only around 10,000 fans to the World Cup, and yet the AWD Arena, which holds around 40,000, was full of red and blue. And an awful lot of the fans outside the stadium before the match had German accents.
It set me thinking: how much of the World Cup is a football tournament, and how much of it is a fancy dress party? In Hanover, it seemed that for every supporter who had travelled from France or Spain, there were several Germans who had switched nationality for the evening. It wasn’t the first time this has happened; for instance, the number of Togo fans who actually came over from Africa for this summer’s tournament would have fitted into a hire coach. So when Togo played, the nations with big follwings here – namely Germany, England, Holland and Sweden – stepped into the breach to buy the tickets and cheer them on.

This swapping of nationalities is having a positive effect on the German public. They’re already rediscovering their pride in their own country by hosting a fan-friendly World Cup in which Jurgen Klinsmann’s side are playing an exciting, attacking brand of football. But in addition to that, they’re getting the chance to try on other nationalities for size by supporting other teams, buying their shirts and wearing their costumes.

I think England’s fans have benefited from this identity swapping too. A lot of us often have fantasies about what it might be like to be somebody else for a day. This World Cup has given fans the chance to flirt with the idea of being English one day, Australian the next, then Italian, Spanish or Togolese. It’s the football equivalent of a holiday romance; you have a bit of fun with another country, and enjoy each other’s company in the sun for a few days, but you know it probably won’t last.
It has all added to the party atmosphere, which in turn has put the brakes on the troublemakers. If the hooliganism prevalent at past World Cups hasn’t yet been put to bed, it’s certainly been told to get upstairs and clean its teeth.

But as exciting as this cultural mixing has been, it’s only part of the story. The World Cup is a bit like the internet; a wonderful tool fo global communication which still excludes a large chunk of the world – the people who don’t have the money or the technology to be part of it. As I mentioned earlier, there have been several teams at this World Cup with very few fans who have actually travelled from their own country. In Togo’s case, for instance, most of their home-based fans couldn’t get visas to come to Germany. And while FIFA tried to ensure that fans from these nations got their fair share of seats for games, the reality is that a lot of those tickets ended up on the black market. This is a political issue as much as a football one. FIFA should do more to tackle the problem, but it can’t do so alone.

As for France and Spain, they don’t have the tradition of taking fans to international tournaments in the numbers that England and Holland do. I watched last night’s game in a beer garden next to the AWD Arena with what, at first glance, appeared to be the people of Madrid, Paris, Barcelona and Marseille. Listening carefully, it sounded more like the people of Hanover in different coloured football shirts.
Maybe this shouldn’t matter, and maybe it doesn’t. The fans are having a good time, the stadiums are full, and the party is still going strong, nearly three weeks in. And yet, and yet…
Something strange happened in the last minute of last night’s match. When Zinedine Zidane scored to put France through, those who were Spain fans for the night shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads. Those who were Spanish looked devastated. Sometimes, it seems, blood is thicker than face paint.

IF this had happened on the BBC or ITV, there would have been uproar. But before German TV station ZDF switched to Munich for live coverage of Germany’s match against Sweden on Saturday, presenter Johannes B Kerner painted German flags on the faces of his two pundits, who then did the same to him. Neutral? No chance.
There’s no way that Gary Lineker, Gabby Logan or Steve Rider would have got away with having England flags painted on their faces when hosting coverage of Sven’s men – their duty offices would have been overloaded with phone calls from angry Scots. But the gesture was a sign of two things. One: The mood of German pride, virtually non-existent before the tournament began, is now flourishing. Two: German TV seems to have been prepared to take more risks with its coverage than its British counterparts.
ZDF is one of four German TV stations showing the World Cup, and its coverage has been the most distinctive. Kerner (who has his own chat show and also regularly presents a cookery programme) holds court in a mini ‘theatre in the round’ in Berlin, packed with fans of the two teams playing in that day’s match. The set is not unlike the sort Davina McCall would race around on Big Brother eviction night, and the coverage has that kind of feel to it.
Kerner’s job seems to be to take the mickey out of his two pundits as much as possible: they are Mainz manager Jurgen Klopp, all floppy blond hair and John Lennon spectacles, and former referee Urs Meier, who allowed those German flags to be painted on his face despite the fact that he is Swiss. Klopp wore a 1950s Germany replica shirt for the Sweden game; even Ian Wright wouldn’t dare show such national support on British TV.
There’s a distinct absence of middle-aged men in polo shirts offering banal half-time analysis. In fact, there’s a distinct lack of half-time analysis full stop, as there are so many adverts to cram in. The ads are pretty much all World Cup-related, all terrible and far too many feature Oliver Kahn. Germany’s permanently grumpy second-choice keeper is king of the endorsements over here, and my God does it show. He features in an ad for Burger King in which he prepares to eat some not-particularly-nice looking concoction while sitting on a bench. (Get it? He’s on the bench, you see. That’s the joke.) Kahn is also in an ad for T-Mobile, which features him and several other German players helping fans into taxis at the airport while James Blunt’s hit ‘High’ whines away in the background. In this ad, Kahn shows a level of friendliness so out of character that I have found myself wondering if he uses a stunt double.
Those of you who have experience of watching German TV will be glad to know that it still shows little cartoons in between the ads to act as a comic sedative, nullifying the viewer’s building rage at the poor quality and length of the commercials eating up his or her life during the half-time interval. These cartoons are currently all football related, with the most bizarre showing a close-up shot of a chubby bloke sitting in what appears to be a cross between a jacuzzi and a bird bath. The camera then pulls back to reveal that this bath is in the middle of a football pitch, where there is a game going on. The man looks baffled, as if the pitch wasn’t there when he got into the bath.
Overall, the approach of ZDF and fellow TV station RTL (who also get down with the supporters by broadcasting from Berlin’s Fan Mile) seems a lot more relaxed than their British counterparts; they’re prepared to take more risks in their presentation as they’re not as worried about offending uptight viewers. ARD’s coverage is more staid, with a presenter in a garish multi-coloured studio which looks like a Children’s ITV cast-off spending a lot of time looking at video relays with former Germany international Gunther Netzer, a man with the haircut, suit, perfect teeth and severe manner of a rising cabinet minister. Most fans are watching games on those three terrestrial networks, rather than the satellite station Premiere, Germany’s answer to Sky.
Some aspects of the TV coverage are the same as in the UK: for instance, no live broadcast of a game involving Germany is complete without a reporter struggling to make themselves heard over a crowd of fans watching the game on a big screen somewhere (at home, it’s the same when England play). But it all adds to the sense that the German TV networks are enjoying the World Cup party, and not taking it too seriously. Now, if we only we could persuade Gary Lineker to have an England flag painted on each cheek for Saturday…

I COULDN’T believe what I was hearing. Two fans in Cologne, independently of each other, told me they had both bought a black-market ticket for Portugal’s game against Holland for just 150 euros.
Considering that tickets for the Group F match between Brazil and Australia had been going for more than 10 times that, it seemed a remarkable drop in price. One of those two fans explained it to me. “The fans from Iran, South Korea, Croatia and all the other countries that have been knocked out are selling their second-round tickets,” he said. “It’s flooding the market, and there are a lot more available than you think.”
The touts, having raked in the cash during the group stage, are finding the second round a bit more tricky. And nowhere did they find it trickier than in Cologne last night, at the match hardly anyone wanted to see – Switzerland against Ukraine.

Last week, Cologne was crammed to bursting point as England played Sweden, and you would have had more chance of finding one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets than a spare ticket for that match. Last night, Cologne was as close to a ghost town as a World Cup city can be on a match night, despite the efforts of the fans who were there, such as the Swiss supporter pictured above. Half-a-dozen police officers posted at Weiden West, the closest railway station to Cologne’s RheinEnergie Stadion, looked bored out of their brains.
There was a look of desperation in the eyes of the touts outside the ground. To make their job harder, they had to compete for business with gloomy-looking France fans, who had bought tickets for last night’s match in Cologne on the assumption that it would involve their team. It would have done, if France had won Group G; but the might of Switzerland proved too great for Thierry Henry and Co. “Swap: Four Switzerland v Ukraine tickets for one France v Spain ticket,” read a card held up by one Frenchman, probably aware that he had no chance – even at that exchange rate.

As I hung around outside the ground, I thought: I could get a bargain here. Then I thought: No. Let the touts sweat for a while – it’s about time they earned their money. So I headed off into the city centre and watched the match on the big screen there (pictured above) for a while. When I got back to the ground at half-time, a handful of touts were still there, looking utterly forlorn. One offered me a 60-euro ticket for 40 euros. I hadn’t been into a match for nearly two weeks. It seemed a price worth paying.
I was searched at the entrance by a security guard, who was happy for me to take in my hulking great copy of the Rough Guide To Germany (surely a potentially deadly missile given its size), my camera phone and an mp3 recorder, but he decided to confiscate my copy of the Daily Mirror. (If anyone knows what the Mirror have done to get their paper on to FIFA’s list of objects banned from World Cup grounds, they should probably tell the editor.)
But even at 40 euros, I felt shortchanged by a match that was the worst of the tournament so far. In fact, it may well have been the worst game of football played anywhere in the world this year, narrowly beating Stockport County’s dismal 0-1 home defeat against Boston in February. The players of Switzerland and Ukraine appeared content to give the ball away and fall over a lot, rather than try to do anything radical such as win the game. The TV cameraman racing up and down the touchline to get tracking shots of the players showed more energy and application that many of those he was filming (I was disgusted when he didn’t get man of the match).

Many of the fans in the stadium were German, and they resorted to heavy sarcasm to keep themselves amused. A fan from Hanover, who bought the seat next to mine from the same tout, kindly translated the chants for me. “There are singing, ‘Oh, this is so nice,’” he said. “We call it English humour.”
A chorus of boos and thumbs down greeted the whistle for the end of normal time and extra time. Even the penalties were dreadful, with Ukraine going through on the basis that at least they were able to score some of theirs. As they celebrated a victory that made all of England’s World Cup performances so far look majestic, the stadium DJ had the brass neck to play ‘Stand Up For The Champions’, a song set to the tune of ‘Go West’. The fans weren’t impressed. It’s not just the touts who are hoping Ukraine don’t get any further in this World Cup.

MAYBE it was because of my visit to Dachau concentration camp on Friday. Maybe it was because Jeff Winter annoys the hell out of me. Either way, the gobby ex-ref from Middlesbrough has really infuriated me this time by comparing Graham Poll’s performance in the Australia v Croatia game to a Holocaust.
Poll – who is England’s refereeing representative at the World Cup – suffered just about the biggest humiliation possible for a man in his job last Thursday night, when he booked Croatia’s Josip Simunic three times before sending him off. It wasn’t a good night for Poll – he also missed two clear Australia penalty claims – and he will find out on Wednesday if he will be sent home from the World Cup as a result.
Step forward ‘Rent-a-quote’ former referee Winter, who piled into Poll with one of the most tasteless, crass and insensitive comments I have ever heard. Winter was being interviewed by Daily Express journalist Harry Harris for an ntlworld.com World Cup videocast (at the time of writing, you can still download it by following this link).
Just under a minute into the videocast, Harris asked Winter for his views on Poll’s performance. This, for those of you without broadband or a computer that you can view videos on, is what Winter said about his former colleague’s display:
“It wasn’t the best. If you’re going to have a bad day, then maybe have it at Tranmere on a Monday night. But at the World Cup finals, with the world watching, it wasn’t a good time to have a Holocaust, and in fairness, that’s what he did have.”
Yes, you read that right. Winter really did include, slap bang in the middle of his disgraceful comparison, surely the most inappropriate use of the phrase “in fairness” in the history of the English language.
Now I know Winter is not backward in coming forward with controversial views, and has become enough of a celebrity since hanging up his whistle in 2004 to bring out an autobiography. But this isn’t about creating controversy. It’s about scandalous ignorance. Millions of people died in the Holocaust, Jeff. Had Poll’s refereeing error resulted in Australia being knocked out of the World Cup (which it didn’t), a few Aussies would have been a bit hacked off, and then they would have got ready to cheer on their cricketers in this winter’s Ashes. Do you see, Jeff? The systematic murder of millions of people by the Nazis is not the same thing as a bad refereeing performance.
One of the most disturbing aspects of watching this video is that Harris, who presumably must have some lingustic skills as a journalist on a national newspaper, didn’t pull Winter up on his comments. Is the Daily Express really that right wing now?
Winter then went on to make a couple of remarks about Poll having a bit of an ego. This is the same Jeff Winter who, in his best-forgotten autobiography ‘Who’s The B*****d In The Black?’, mused on whether the lengthy applause given by Liverpool’s fans at the end of his final visit to Anfield as a referee was for him, rather than for a home team who had just won 4-0. Don’t know how to break this to you, Jeff, but I think the applause was for the Liverpool players. Still, well done anyway on your refereeing career.
I interviewed Jeff Winter once, about nine months ago, when he was refereeing a ‘Soccer Legends’ six-a-side tournament at the MEN Arena, consisting of ex-pros from around the country. Winter had just sent off two Manchester City players in the same game, ending any hopes they had of winning the trophy and making the mild-mannered Carlisle boss Paul Simpson – who was playing for the Blues – as angry as I’ve ever seen him. Winter brushed aside the idea that he had made himself the centre of attention with an outrageously officious performance in what was supposed to be a light-hearted tournament, simply making several comments along the lines of: “Rules are rules.”
Still, it’s not about the referees, is it Jeff? As he said to Harris about Poll: “The game is not about referees; it’s about the players. That’s who people pay a lot of money to go and see.”
That’s right, Jeff. And the sooner you heed your own advice and ref off, the better.
UPDATE: Wednesday, June 28 – As expected, Graham Poll has been sent home from the World Cup as a result of his error. The explanation he gave to FIFA for the mistake will probably only infuriate Australians even more.
It turns out that the reason Poll didn’t send off Josip Simunic (Croatia’s No 3) when booking him for the second time was that he wrote down the name of Craig Moore (Australia’s No 3) when he handed out the yellow card. Right number, wrong team. Ouch. I don’t think Poll will be going to Sydney for his holidays this summer.
Still, if that’s his World Cup refereeing career over, any chance we can get him umpiring the Ashes this winter? With the state of the England cricket team at the moment, it may be the only chance we have…

“YOU’RE a journalist? I hope you’re not writing that we’re all hooligans,” said Martin, an England fan from Prestwich, when he saw me taking notes at the Fan Fest in Stuttgart.
His point was a good one. The trouble in Stuttgart last night that led to 300 arrests made the headlines this morning, but it doesn’t give the true story of England’s support at this World Cup. Most are just here to enjoy the party. The trouble that has happened has been of the sort you would expect in an overcrowded British city centre on New Year’s Eve. The atmosphere may get a bit edgy at times, but I’ve had scarier nights out in Blackpool.
There was certainly a party feel in the city centre this afternoon, where tens of thousands of England fans crammed in to create an atmosphere that was boisterous but generally friendly.
“There was a bit of trouble last night, but I’d like to think there won’t be any more,” said England fan Jody Warner. “It will be fine as long as people keep enjoying themselves and the authorities don’t get too heavy handed.
“When I saw the trouble on the news this morning, I had second thoughts about coming here. But you have to keep it in perspective. There were 300 arrests, and about a third of them were German. There were about 50,000 England fans here last night, so we’re talking about 0.6 per cent of our total support. I just hope that 0.6 per cent don’t let the rest of us down.”

It would be an understatement to say England fans outnumbered Ecuador’s support in Stuttgart. Not only were Ecuador outnumbered by England fans, they were outnumbered by Germany fans too. England’s fans were crammed in their thousands on the steps of the Konigsbau shopping complex (pictured below), opposite the Schlossplatz main square, where the Fan Fest was set up. They sang the anti-German war songs which have sadly become as much a feature of this World Cup as the ticket touts, but otherwise behaved themselves.

But of course, what’s boisterous to come can be intimidating to others. Ecuador’s support looked bewildered and a little frightened by the mass of red and white filling the city centre streets. When I spoke to Jody Warner, I found him chatting to two Ecuador fans (pictured below) who had found some respite in a corner of the Fan Fest park, near the big screen.

“I’m a little bit afraid of the English,” said Yvonne Daum (above left), from Karlsruhe, watching the match with her Ecuadorian boyfriend. “They seem a bit aggressive, and they drink a lot of beer.”
Her boyfriend Juan Areualo, from Ibarra (above centre), was happier to concentrate on Ecuador’s first-ever appearance in the second round at a World Cup finals. “There are a minority of England fans who make trouble, but generally they are very friendly,” he said, before turning his attention to his own team. “This is one of the best teams Ecuador has ever had. I think it’s because they have played together for a long time.”
Among the England support, the talk was all about the atmosphere and Sven-Goran Eriksson’s increasingly baffling team selections.

“I don’t agreed with what Sven’s done at all,” said Jon Teesdale (pictured above left with dad Rob and brother George), who lives in Castlefield. “He shouldn’t be changing the team around and bringing players in, like he’s done with Michael Carrick. And I really don’t understand why he brought Theo Walcott along when he’s clearly not going to use him.
“As for the atmosphere, I’ve been out here from the start, and it’s been magnificent. But FIFA have to do something about the ticket situation. There must be getting on for 100,000 fans in Stuttgart today, and there’s so much competition for tickets.”

With Ecuador bringing few fans, there were more tickets available on the black market than there had been for the Sweden game in Cologne on Tuesday. The average asking price was around 400 euros – not bad for a second-round game.
“We’ve been asked a few times if we were looking for tickets,” said fan Andrew Robertson (pictured above right with his mate Rob Foster). “I don’t know how many are on the black market, but I’m just happy taking in the atmosphere here at the Fan Fest.”
It’s fair to say that the England fans made that atmosphere. The rowdiest it got was when fans tossed plastic cups full of lager into the air when David Beckham scored England’s second-half winner – although there was a tense moment as the coverage on the big screen cut out just before he took the free kick, only for it to come back on just in time. It seemed the German police’s low-key approach had worked. It’s also much harder to make the effort to cause trouble in 90-degree heat.
In those temperatures, most England fans were happier doing the conga round the Schlossplatz at full-time. In fact, there was probably more trouble on the pitch at this evening’s Portugal v Holland game. With the Portugal side due to face England in Gelsenkirchen next Saturday now weakened by suspensions, there might be a chance for another conga yet.
Oh, and if you’re reading this, Martin, I hope you feel I’ve done the England fans justice.

LAST Wednesday, Angola fitness coach Jimmy Petruzzi watched them draw their final World Cup game 1-1 with Iran. On Monday, he will watch Italy play Australia in Kaiserslautern. Three days later, he will be back at Gigg Lane helping to plan Bury’s pre-season programme.
There’s not much time for a breather when you combine your job as a League Two club’s fitness coach with a similar role helping a World Cup squad. So Jimmy was on something of a flying visit to Frankfurt when I caught up with him at a pavement cafe in the city.
He is taking a few days off to enjoy the World Cup as a spectator before flying back to England, where he will aim to attract Angola internationals to Bury, with Shakers boss Chris Casper’s backing. But as Jimmy doesn’t speak Portuguese, he will use David Diaz, a former Angola international now based in London, as an intermediary.

“I want to enjoy the tournament for a few days now,” said Petruzzi (pictured above). “I’m going to head down to Kaiserslautern and enjoy it there, then I’ll fly back to England on Wednesday, and we start pre-season training on June 29! When I get back to Bury, I’m going to start the fitness testing and get to work on the pre-season campaign. I’m also going to get the ball rolling on this Angola link, and get David to meet the gaffer.
“There have been some players I targeted before the World Cup as potential Bury players. I spoke to Chris about that and he was keen to back me. If we want to build this link, it would be beneficial to have someone who can speak the language, which is why I’ve been keen to get David in as an intermediary.
“I think it’s possible that we can get Angola international players to Bury. Obviously, there will be other teams interested in them, but we’ve got the link there, and we’re a good club, trying to do things the right way on and off the pitch, and I think we have a lot of selling points. David is going to play a strong role in getting players over too.”
Sydney-born, Rochdale-based Petruzzi has enjoyed his first experience of working at a World Cup, although he is still readjusting to the outside world, having been ensconsed in Angola’s tournament camp – based initially in Spain, and then in Celle, near Hanover – almost from the moment Bury’s League Two campaign ended last month.
He said: “In a way, it’s quite insular, because you’re so focused on your own job. It’s like being in a cocoon. You get to a cut-off point where you hit a date, and after that date, you really don’t know what’s going on anywhere else outside your own environment. It can be quite intensive. Until you come out of it, you haven’t really got much of an idea of what’s going on.”
It was a testing experience though for the 33-year-old, who was brought into the Angola set-up by a previous manager, and who had to prove to head coach Luis Goncalves, his staff and the players that he was the right man for the job. When Angola went a goal down to Portugal in the opening minutes of their first match, things didn’t look good.
He said: “I felt a bit of pressure when Portugal scored in that first game, because my involvement with the team – coming from the outside in – was always going to be a challenge for me. I always had to go that extra yard to justify my existence. But I knew we had good players, who showed great character and great strength.”
Widely expected to be World Cup fall guys, Angola’s bunch of semi-pros, free agents and Portuguese second division players emerged with great credit in only losing 1-0 to Portugal, then went one better by holding Mexico to a 0-0 draw.
“I think the Mexico game was the turning point for me,” Petruzzi said. “In the first game, we were a bit nervous. The players had shown they had character, guts and courage, but maybe didn’t justify how good they were technically and tactically. The second game showed that they were clever technically and tactically. Even though we had a man sent off, we probably had our chances to win the game, so a draw was probably a fair result.”
That draw gave Angola an outside chance of writing one of the great World Cup stories by qualifying for the last 16 – if they beat Iran, group rivals Mexico lost to Portugal and there was a four-goal swing in the goal difference. For a few moments, when Angola led Iran, there looked to be a chance.
“When Mexico were 2-1 down and we were 1-0 up, we still needed a two-goal swing, and that was one of the reasons we kept attacking,” Petruzzi said. “We probably could have held out and won the game, but we wanted to try to qualify.”
Nonetheless, Angola’s achievement in giving such a good account of themselves filled Petruzzi with pride, even if it didn’t totally surprise him.
He said: “All logic would suggest that we would get a bruising. But there are physical, committed, hard-working set of lads. And a physical team with good tactical awareness and basic technique is halway to being competitive in international football.”
Their performance has also done much to bring cheer to a country living through the aftermath of a 27-year civil war which only ended in 2002.
“This World Cup gave Angola the chance to advertise itself to the outside world,” Petruzzi said. “The squad did themselves justice, conducting themselves with a lot of dignity on and off the pitch. If the country is united for 90 minutes during a World Cup game, then we’ve achieved something. The people of Angola have experienced real hardship for many, many years. There are players in the team who have lost family members. But that adversity created a real bond in the squad.”
Having done his bit for Angola, Petruzzi can now sit back and watch the country of his birth take on Italy in Monday’s second-round clash in Kaiserslautern. He was thrilled to see Australia pinch second place ahead of Croatia in a group topped by Brazil.
“I grew up in the same suburb as Harry Kewell and Mark Schwarzer,” Petruzzi said “The players are a fantastic bunch of guys, and I’m very pleased for them. I do know Graham Arnold, the assistant coach, and he’s done very well. We had a good team in 1998 who were unlucky not to qualify, and the same again in 2002, and now I think they’ll get the recognition they deserve.”
Whether Petruzzi will be able to enjoy the match is another matter. He may be an Aussie, but his parents are Italian, and he admitted he will have split loyalties.
“It’s difficult,” he said. “My parents are from Naples, and I’m Australian through and through. I came through the Australian sporting system and I owe a lot to the country. But I do have a big soft spot for Italy. I just want it good be a good game and may the best team win.”
As for Petruzzi’s international future, the most you can say is that he surely must have one after his achievements with Angola. Beyond that, the picture is a little hazy.
He said: “I’m intending to stay at international level. One or two international teams have spoken to me about working with them on a part-time basis. It’s something I’m keen to follow up, and the gaffer at Bury is very keen for me to stay in international football, because it gives me a chance to become better at what I do, and attract players to the club as well.
“In terms of continuing with Angola, the ball’s in their court. Saying that, there are two or three other teams interested in me as well. But my number one priority is Bury. This has been a fantastic experience, and I’m sure Bury will get a lot from this as well.”
And it is partly because of this that Petruzzi is convinced Bury will have a better season this time round, avoiding a repeat of their final-day relegation escape last term.
He said: “I’m very optimistic we can do well next season. Last season was very challenging, because the manager took over when the team were deep in relegation trouble and one or two key players were sold on. This time, we’re preparing as well as we can. It’s not easy to get players because we’re under financial restrictions and there are other teams with bigger budgets. But we’re doing things right on and off the pitch, and we want to play a good brand of football. The players we’ve got are fantastic, and there’s every reason to believe we’ll have a good season.”