Kofi Time

‘IF the top headline on the page is the day’s biggest sporting story, then David Beckham is now bigger than even the European Cup final, at least in the Telegraph’s eyes.

Cheating Kaiser

The Beckham news that will have us gripped is that he has granted Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, an audience this summer.

Having recently yielded to Nelson Mandela’s pleas for a meeting, Dave will now spend one day of his summer hols putting the world to rights.

He’s a good boy is Dave. But not as good as Andriy Shevchenko, as the Telegraph calls the Ukrainian striker whose penalty won the Champions’ League for AC Milan.

The rest of the papers prefer to call him Andrei, although the acclaim heaped upon him is universal.

With the scores tied at 0-0, and the game’s periods of extra time at an end, it came to the dreaded penalties.

To help us understand the route to victory, the Guardian lists the 10 penalty takers, detailing with a cross they who missed and a tick they who scored. And of ten kicks, only five found their way to the back of the net.

While this tells all Englishmen that they are not the world’s worst penalty takers, it must be stated that not one of the strikes sailed over the crossbar or hit the corner flag.

All were on target, meaning that the goalkeepers made the saves that mattered, with AC’s Dida making one more than Buffon of Juventus.

But there is story in the Independent that shows how easy it is to throw a game of football.

German legend Franz Beckenbauer has hinted on German television that his Bayern Munich team deliberately threw a game to prevent city rivals TSV Munich winning the Bundesliga.

”I’m not saying that we lost on purpose but our resistance was limited to the minimum,” he said.

He was, however, unable to say whether in 1966 the ball crossed the line or not.

‘

Posted: 29th, May 2003 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink