Hooliganism is getting out of control in Holland. Marcelle Van Hoof describes the latest incident that resulted in a supporter's death
On Sunday morning March 23rd around 50 Ajax fans met and fought with 200 of their Feyenoord counterparts in a field near a busy main road. In the fight which lasted only five minutes one Ajax supporter, Carlo Picornie, was so badly hit on the head with steel and wooden bars that he died.
Dear WSC
I recently attended the Blackburn Rovers v Coventry City delayed Fourth Round FA Cup tie. During the game the referee approached Gordon Strachan to warn him against coaching from the sidelines only to receive the reply that he was allowed to run up and down the touchline because he was sub. Aside from whether or not this is a valid defence, it occurred to me that the ban on coaches and managers issuing instructions from the side of the pitch is rather bizarre. Can explain why it shouldn’t be allowed? It seems to me that thousands of people in the ground are allowed to shout (often conflicting) instructions to the team, and to ban the coaching staff from doing so is unfair. In any case the chance of the manager’s voice being heard above the noise is slim, the chance of the instructions being understood by the players is very remote, and there is an ice cube in hell’s chance of them actually acting on the instructions and making a difference to the game. It may even add to the entertainment if, say, some of the more vocal managers were allowed to run up and down the touchline shrieking instructions. Imagine it’s the last five minutes of Manchester United losing to Wimbledon in the FA Cup – you’d have Alex Ferguson, Brian Kidd, Joe Kinnear and Sam Hammam vying for positions on the wing and shouting simultaneously, “Get it in the box!” and “Hoof it in the crowd!” You might even get the odd player losing concentration at a crucial time and missing the ball because, for example, he was trying to understand what Arsène Wenger had just yelled at him. Surely everyone would like to see Arsenal lose like this?
Jeremy Barker, Tonbridge
Simon Evans explains why the bad old days of English football have come to be re-enacted every weekend in stadiums throughout the former Soviet Bloc
Attending a game in Eastern Europe for an English fan is a strangely familiar experience: you could be at an English Third Division match circa 1981 – the crumbling, half-empty terraces, stinking toilets, the alcohol, the drunks and the ‘boys’ staring each other out through fences topped with barbed wire.
Ian Plenderleith reports on how the new model Champions League is likely to discriminate further against teams from the smaller football nations
It’s time for the Champions League highlights on German television with guest star, Franz Beckenbauer. It’s approaching midnight before we get to see the game between Steaua Bucharest and Widzew Lodz. “Well,” says Franz, relishing a rare opportunity to win some points from a public fed-up at his attempts to interfere with the game at every level and at every opportunity, “this is really the game we’ve all been waiting for!”
Dear WSC
I don’t know what the rest of you think but all the recent media coverage of the Italian national team had led me to one major conclusion: Paolo Maldini gets his good looks from his Mum’s side of the family.
Alex Anderson, Ardrossan