A Dead End

Winners

Who says the Corinthian spirit is dead? Not Petr Cech, the Czech Republic’s very tall goalkeeper. He wants Fifa to rescind the yellow card dished out to Ghana’s Asamoah, who took a penalty without the referee’s permission. “He heard a fan blow a whistle behind the goal,” says Cech. “He is not guilty.”

Luiz Felipe Scolari, aka ‘Big Phil’, has achieved a new record of leading a team to ten successive wins as a coach at the World Cup.

The schoolchildren who missed out on watching Ghana play the Czech Republic in an alleged ticket scam have been given tickets. Thanks to Fifa, the pupils will now fly out to watch England play in the quarter-finals on July 1. Or Ecuador.

Losers

Two England fans parked their car in a Cologne street. Ever the Boy Scouts, they took care to write down the name of the street. Sadly, on their way back to the car they became lost. They asked the locals, who responded by laughing at them. How cruel they thought. No matter, the police would help them. So they asked them. And they too laughed. But why? As the police told them, “Einbahnstrasse” means one-way street in German.

According to the New York Times’s man in the know, Mogadishu is not the best place to watch the World Cup. As he writes: “A week ago, when Mexico and Iran were still playing the first half of their World Cup soccer match, gunmen allied with the Islamic courts burst into a tiny theatre in the Hiliwaa neighborhood of north Mogadishu, condemned the place as ungodly and angrily switched off the television set.” Coincidentally, Iran were losing at the time…

A boy of seven was attacked for wearing an England kit while playing football with his dad in a Scottish park. Hugo Clapshaw was playing in Edinburgh when a man in his twenties approached and punched him on the head. The loser then punched the boy’s father.

Posted: 22nd, June 2006 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink