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Curbing foul play

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Jun 02, 2006 01:08 AM IST

How does one know that the football World Cup is drawing near? In Britain, at least, it?s when the police attempt to confiscate the passports of die-hard football fanatics to prevent them from travelling to Germany for the game.

How does one know that the football World Cup is drawing near? In Britain, at least, it’s when the police attempt to confiscate the passports of die-hard football fanatics to prevent them from travelling to Germany for the game. Wait a minute, aren’t they missing the point? Last heard, the whole point of a spectator sport — especially that of a tournament with such high mileage — was to make sure that the stadiums were filled to capacity, and that too with as many to cheer on the national team as possible.

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HT Image

But with excitement riding high, and rowdiness off the field much more than the tugging and pulling and tripping that goes on between those in jerseys, who could blame the British authorities for deciding to hand out red cards to more than 3,000 identified ‘football hooligans’. And this is the country that gave the world civilisation as we know it?

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This is perhaps the only game in the world — not even an India-Pakistan cricket match played on home ground could arouse such wild passion (plastic bottles thrown on the field pale in comparison to what the ‘hooligans’ do)  — where ‘referees’ are needed more to prevent foul play on the stands than to control the players themselves. If only, football fans were more sporting.

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