I suppose what Integoo is selling fairly describes every stadium-manager’s dream, as this security system has at its core a combination of video-cameras and software that enables fairly precise facial recognition. Most soccer/football clubs these days (at least in the Western world) operate on the basis of “club cards” or “season tickets” held by their established set of fans, who are expected to attend a majority of games, with only limited tickets for each match left over for casual visitors. So when you apply to get your club card, you have to provide a photograph of yourself; that then enables the Integoo security system, when someone tries to go past the stadium turnstiles for a match, to match up the face of the person holding the ticket with the face of the person on record – and to block the turnstile either if the faces do not match or if that face has become officially undesirable due to past bad behavior.

Only the Krakow club KS Cracovia is benefiting from purchasing and installing this system as of yet, according to the article. So it’s obviously a sort of guinea-pig for the technology, which will presumably spread far more widely, and quickly, once it has proven itself there.

Make no mistake, Polish football needs something of this sort of technology, for at least two reasons: 1) Polish football hooligans are a real problem! (Everyone hears about English hooligans – or did, until a few years ago when the problem seems largely to have died down – but their Polish counterparts have long been a serious societal scourge.) And 2) You might have heard about that Euro 2012 football tournament coming up, to be held in Poland and the Ukraine (if the latter can actually get its act together in time) – football stadiums hosting those games will have to deal with hooligans from all corners of the continent!

Then again, there’s more than a whiff here of all the bad associations conjured up by the mention of George Orwell’s title “1984.” On the one hand, it’s understandable why this is happening here from these lands’ recent pasts under oppressive Communist governments, which would have lept to implement such technology – for purposes way beyond just football – had it been available then. On the other, it’s hard imagining the Czech Republic as being the locale for this sort of pioneering technology – but I guess that just unfairly maligns that country, which actually boasts inter alia considerable programming talent, as evidenced by world-class anti-virus software companies and the like. Still: Is this sort of face-recognition set-up all that pioneering? Surely something similar has been implemented already elsewhere, somewhere in the world?

                          

Now down in the Southern Hemisphere, the French team isn’t doing very well and will probably fly home after only the three games of the tournament’s first round, but that is not the point. The point is rather the continued refusal by FIFA officials (i.e. from the international football organization in charge of the World Cup) to install any sort of modern technology (e.g. televised replay review) to ensure that officiating travesties like what happened to the Irish can never happen again. This only ensures, of course, that such a thing will happen again, at least one more time, and this during that organization’s signature event that draws the sustained attention of billions of spectators from all over the world – a substantial portion of whom tune in to cheer on their own nation’s team.

Sure enough, another such travesty has come along on cue, namely the denial yesterday to the United States team of a perfectly-valid third goal which would have capped a tremendous rally from a 2-0 deficit by half-time with a glorious win. Instead, the US team earned a 2-2 draw, which gave them a mere one point towards advancing further in the tournament rather than the full three to which the victory they deserved would have entitled them.

Any assertion that the Americans just didn’t deserve to win anyway, having put themselves in that 2-0 hole in the first half – even when put forward by a renowned sports journalist writing in that nation’s “newspaper of record” – is simply silly, perhaps even evidence of a tendency towards rationalization bordering on the psychotic: it was a perfectly-good goal, and neither the referee nor any other FIFA official has yet to offer any reason why it was disallowed. Little more attention is likewise due to claims that the free-kick from which the disallowed goal resulted was itself illegitimate: that is far more a matter of legitimate contention either way and, in any case, it is naturally much more important to get goal/no goal decisions right, since they’re the ones which – as here – can by themselves make a two-point difference (or even worse; see below) in a team’s tournament standing.

Perhaps the American team will be able to advance into the next round anyway. But already FIFA officials will have harvested one serious, undesired result from their blindness to the necessity of bringing in modern technology: loss of the American market. As with each of the other World Cup tournaments involving the American team, the inevitable articles have proliferated about why North American has continually been relatively immune to the appeal of “soccer” as a mass spectator sport. Nothing ever really happens on the field, supposedly; the referee keeps how much time is really left a secret; Americans like sports where they can use their hands; and so on. As of yesterday an additional and rather more serious objection to the sport can be added: that’s the game where they can’t get the decisions right, where there is absolutely nothing to prevent a team from being blatantly robbed of a dramatic come-from-behind victory. It just amounts to a bunch of athletes running around on a field involved in a crap-shoot, something completely subject to chance or a referee’s particular whim – the hell with it! And thus do prospects of enlisting the enormous population/income/marketing potential of that part of the globe in support of this “world game” become remoter than ever.

Who’s Next To Be Robbed?

Note also that at this point the World Cup tournament is still in its early stages. Another such miscarriage of football-justice can hardly be ruled out, and in exactly a week the playoff stage will start where in each game the loser goes immediately home, making the effects of any such refereeing mistake all the more irretrievable. So which will be the next country – after Ireland, after the USA (if they turn out not to qualify through the group stage) – to watch its footballing hopes and dreams betrayed as its national team unjustly loses a game under controversial circumstances? And just how much consternation among national fans and vituperation against FIFA officials does there have to be before the latter finally see the light and start making use of available 21st-century technology which can (wholly, or at least in part) make this sort of agonizing controversy a thing of the past?

There is also another, more insidious angle to what happened at last evening’s USA vs. Slovenia football match. The official in charge was Koman Coulibaly of Mali, supposedly a veteran international referee with particular experience at the biennial African Cup of Nations tournament, but clearly only present in the ranks of officials available to run games at this World Cup due to a sort of affirmative action-type policy which prefers summoning single referees from a wide range of all the world’s football leagues to tapping multiple officials from the top leagues (e.g. England, France, Spain) where the football is at its most serious. In any case, one would have to expect that referees’ pay at the “less serious” leagues – where one has to include those based in Africa – lags significantly behind. Consider this in connection with speculation that arose prior to the World Cup over the possible “fixing” of games to further the interests of powerful (often Asian-based) gambling syndicates – and the possible motives behind Coulibaly’s otherwise inexplicable (and so far unexplained) decision to deny the US team that winning goal become quite ugly indeed.

                          

Then again, perhaps Henkel’s interest here is more of the rubbernecking variety, the irresistible attraction to passers-by of a ten-car highway pile-up, since Angola’s hosting does seem to be a disaster in the making. In the middle of his piece he mentions the “open secret” that none of the other participating African nations really wanted Angola to be the host. Why? Mainly because – according to Henkel – Luanda, the capital city, has ranked as the world’s most-expensive capital since 2008. Twelve euros for a double cheeseburgers; more importantly, three hundred-euro per night as the cheapest room-rate at any passable hotel. The latter naturally impacts directly on the other national teams that will be spending time in the country to compete, but it also means that precious few of their fans will be able to travel along with them. Those fans will also suffer from the country’s “catastrophic” transportation infrastructure as they try to get around to the various games, with no formal system of taxicabs and no real public transportation. That’s where the “improvisation” in the title comes from: that hope is all that both organizers and participating teams have left to clutch at towards a four-week tournament that won’t end up making everyone (other than the hosts) penniless and insane. (Ticket prices for the games, however, are said to be quite reasonable.)

Perhaps you’re asking “How could a country that just emerged from a long civil war [it ended in 2002] be so expensive?” The answer is oil, as well as diamonds, which together have made the economy quite fast-growing, but really only for a few. Henkel cites one figure that, while some can afford the €12 double cheeseburgers, 70% of Angola’s population still subsists on less than €1.50 per day. The Africa Cup tournament is in the minds of some – somehow – supposed to help heal this divide; in the words of the Angolan Minister for Youth and Sport, Gonçalvez Muandumba*, “The Africa Cup should kindle enthusiasm for sport in our population and thereby further social integration.”

* With apologies to Dave Barry, I hasten to assure you that I did not just make that name up!

                          

Now there is a report in the Dutch newspaper Trouw that some form of punishment is headed the team’s way. No less than the Iranian parliament today demanded an explanation from the Iranian football association and threatened the team with sanctions of some kind.

On the other hand, this news report, while somewhat short, nonetheless manages to mention twice that the Iranians were playing against Japan, when it was really the South Korean team. Should we therefore believe anything else it says? I recommend “Yes,” as Trouw is really usually among the better of the Dutch dailies. For what it’s worth, this piece is sourced to the Dutch national news agency ANP, anyway.

UPDATE: Yes, you better believe: via Andrew Sullivan’s weblog, word comes from the Guardian that four of the six players who dared to wear the green wristbands have been “retired” from football.

                          

And then there are the vuvuzelas. Perhaps, you may ask, that’s the nickname of the team and/or the supporters of one participating nation? No, those are the cheap plastic trumpet-like things that many fans are using to set up an ear-splitting racket to accompany the game they are watching live – devices which “remind one of the wind instruments heralds used at tournaments in the Middle Ages,” according to an article on this vuvuzela problem in the Frankfurther Rundschau.

Yes, when blown they apparently emit a dreadfully loud noise, which the FR article describes as “deafening” and an “elephant sound.” They have already prompted some public complaints among players and even from Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA president, who admitted to the press “They do make a lot of noise. FIFA is quite concerned about the noise, that also can constantly be heard in the TV [broadcasts].” On the other hand, the fundamental fact remains that FIFA explicitly approved the vuvuzelas for this Confederations Cup, so the players and everyone else will just have to endure them (perhaps with the aid of earplugs?) throughout. But for next year? Despite the ringing in his ears, Blatter seems not inclined to change the policy for 2010, either: “When you go to Africa,” he observed, “it’s simply loud. I have always said: football is drumming, rhythm, dancing.”

And whether elephantine or not, that sound is music to the ears of German businessmen Frank Urbas and Gerd Kehrberg. They’re still back in Düsseldorf, but they gained the license to manufacture and sell these vuvuzelas to European fans headed for the World Cup next summer.

                          

Right, but what about closer to (the €S) home, what about the Netherlands’ economy? Also from Het Financiële Dagblad, we get some good news straight from the Dutch premier Jan Peter Balkenende that he is confident that the strong character of the Dutch will get them through the hard times.

(Unfortunately, I can’t get the link to Balkenende’s HFD op-ed piece; I think it was kept for the print edition only, HFD often still does that. But we do get a news article about that from the Dutch press-agency ANP that appears in a number of the Dutch dailies, among which for example the Algemeen Dagblad: Premier: Out of the recession on character.)

“Against headwinds we in the Netherlands kick harder,” the Premier writes, “That’s in our character.” He is also confident that the Dutch should come out all right in the end because the authorities seem better prepared this time – having already successfully moved to bail out a couple of teetering local banks – and because the country has a long tradition of its “social partners” (i.e. business and labor and government) cooperating to do what is best for all. A case of whistling in the dark, you say? You may well be right, but it also seems that similarly rosy-ish opinions are held by an important stratum of Dutchmen and -women who are not paid to be publicly optimistic: the entrepreneurs. This article in another Dutch Daily, Het Parool, discusses the results of a recent survey undertaken among around one thousand Dutch small- and medium-sized enterprise businesspeople. Forty percent expect a better financial result from their businesses next year than they had this year, although 25% have already noticed a downturn in sales and 50% consider the worsening economic conditions to be “a serious threat.” So as I say: “rosy-ish.”

But leave it to a Christian paper to contribute a silver lining to the discussion! A unique piece in the Nederlands Dagblad reminds us of a remarkable means the Dutch have come up with in recent times to boost export earnings: Footballers are an important export product. And this is not just some puff-piece written to remind us of, say, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (pictured in the article) – lately of Ajax Amsterdam, but recently sold on to Real Madrid for a tremendous sum because that world-renowned club needed a striker to replace Ruud van Nistlerooy, who is out for the rest of the year with a knee injury (and who himself, of course, is another spectacular example of a Dutch football export). No, this piece (by-lined to ND’s economic editors) has the solid numbers, from a Netherlands Central Bank study no less. Over the past five years the Netherlands has accumulated a trade surplus when it comes to football players in the amount of €225 million, even though far more foreign players came to play in the Netherlands during that period (272) than left the Netherlands (180). It’s apparently a matter of superior “football value-added,” you understand: the Netherlands is a far better place to get your kicks.

                          

It’s going to be tough, but the club at least has gotten a helping hand from one of its more rabid fans, the Italian actress Sabrina Ferilli. As the Czech News Agency ČTK reports in the daily Lidové noviny (For Progressing the A.S. Roma Footballers Are Promised a Strip-Tease), Ferilli has promised to take her clothes off for the delectation of Roma’s players – and their other fans – if the team beats Man. United sufficiently to make it through to the next round. And while the article notes towards its very beginning that Ferilli is now 43 years of age, the embedded video profile (apparently a report from an Italian news channel) also shows very clearly that she still has quite a lot to offer any viewers. (Don’t worry, though, the video would rate no more than “PG” under the American movie rating system, if even that.)

Offering a motivational tool like this is nothing new for Ferilli, though, as ten years ago she made clear her standing promise to offer a similar reward to A.S. Roma’s players whenever they won the Italian premier league (a.k.a. “Serie A”). They finally achieved that at the end of the 2000-2001 season, and Ferilli duly showed up to do her thing at the victory party, although then she never unveiled herself further than what you could call a “micro-bikini” – probably, so writes ČTK, because of the public disapproval the Vatican had expressed towards her plans.

(Linguistic footnote: Yep, “micro-bikini” is my translation of the Czech miniaturní dvoudílné plavky. I think that’s pretty spot-on, but if you have a better one then I’d be glad to hear it. On the other hand, if you’re the type who wants to object “But in the article it’s written differently: miniaturních instead, etc.,” well, that’s because the entire phrase happens to be in the locative case, but in general I really think you should just sit back, chill out, and leave such heavy translation-work to me.)

UPDATE: The obvious next step after you’ve read an article like this – especially if you’d prefer avoiding having to translate any more such Czech expressions as miniaturní dvoudílné plavky – is to try to find something on the subject in the on-line Italian press. As our Italian friends like to exclaim: Eccolo! No less than La Gazzetta dello Sport confirms the account, in an article headlined La Ferilli Repeats Her Promise: You’re Champions, I Undress. (There’s another nice picture of her right at the top, as well, so even you non-Italian-readers can go ahead and click on through. It’s even just a bra or bikini-top that she’s wearing there, although I would unfortunately not characterize this one as “micro.”) Here’s the word-for-word transcript of what she said during an appearance on Radio Montecarlo: “If Roma wins the Champions League [Oho! So it's not enough just to advance from this round!], I promise a show for the fans that will make them forget the strip-tease of 2001 at the Circo Massimo. [I assume that's the famous Circus Maximus from Roman times; what an excellent venue in which to do a strip-tease, if you've got both the materials and the attitude to do it well!] But, to not jinx myself, I won’t say anything else.” But then, as the Gazzetto writer points out, Manchester United does stand in the way, although that consideration seemingly has no effect on the heightened enthusiasm, as repeatedly expressed in the comments section, for an ultimate A.S. Roma victory.

                          

Two recent New York Times articles have picked up on the “sad paradox” (as one of them quotes from the French newspaper Libération) between the underwhelming levels of participation in the recent EU Euro-MP elections and the Euro2004 mania that kicked off soon afterward. And both make the point that, in painting their faces the colors of their respective flags and cheering on their teams (as well as often mocking teams and fans from fellow Euro-countries), perhaps Europeans are not quite as “post-nationalist” as they may claim to be. Alan Cowell, asking What Kicks the Continent to Life?, writes from Rome and so takes thing primarily from an Italian view, where supposedly the sense of nation is even at the beginning of the 21st century still not so developed compared to most European countries, but where nevertheless the fortunes of the national squad are covered with great attention and emotion. This is on the whole a good thing in Cowell’s eyes; he quotes the noted Italian expert on Italy, Beppe Severgnini, that the quadrennial European championships have become “a most beautiful, peaceful allegory for the wars that, thanks be to God, no longer exist in Europe.”

Or else all this is not such a good thing, according to Edward Rothstein, in his review of Franklin Foer’s soon-to-be-published book How Soccer Explains the World. Yes, Europe shows its undying nationalistic side when it comes to football, Rothstein writes, and it also shows its racist and even tribalistic side, in the insults and abuse still often meted out to black players and supporters of opposing teams, respectively. Strangely, the US is very different in this respect: football doesn’t get ugly there, mainly because football (known as “soccer,” of course) is not so important. It is mainly something for middle- and upper-class youth, and Rothstein reports that Foer even associates US soccer with “with an ideal of globalization.”

LONGING FOR THAT GOOD, OLD-TIME FANATICISM

One could be forgiven for attributing to these American reporters a sublimated mocking intent in these pieces: “Haha, you’re all not so ‘post-national’ and peace-loving after all!” So it’s appropriate to go on to consider the treatments of the “larger meaning” of football in general and Euro2004 in particular that have appeared in the European press. For one, there’s Eckhard Fuhr’s The National as Ironic Ethno-Quote in Die Welt. Yes, as you can gather from the title, this piece strains a bit in its sociological reaching. With his German perspective, Fuhr notes how truly remarkable the displays of German patriotism are at events such as the European championships – the face-painting, the loud and serious singing of the national anthem (but, properly, only of the third stanza of Deutschland Über Alles – that’s the peaceful one that is politically correct for post-WWII Germany). For Germans have for some time otherwise been among Europeans least concerned with, or proud of, their nationality.

But things have softened over the years when it comes to football fanaticism, Fuhr reports. For a long time that German national anthem would elicit a chorus of whistles at international football competitions (this due to historical reasons, of course), but in Portugal the whistles have merely been sporadic. One has to think that, if this is true, it’s only because the Germans never got the chance to play England. But they did play – and lose to – the Czech Republic, and Fuhr reports Czech and German fans sharing beers together at the stadium, all wrapped now in a EU-friendliness that would have been unthinkable during such occasions in the past.

Fuhr draws a strange conclusion from all of this – that, as the fanaticism has waned, football has been ruined! (Damit hat Europa dem Fußball den Garaus gemacht.) Football, he writes, has become like non-alcoholic beer: “well-meant and unable to be enjoyed.” He even seems to savor those instances of throw-back behavior (throw-back to past fanaticism, that is) exhibited in Portugal by the fans from Croatia (who raised a stink with their racists chants; yes, that’s indeed what Fuhr is writing about!) and from England (and you know very well what they did: bust some heads).

CHURCH OF FOOTBALL

Going on to something completely different, the article in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (in that paper’s “Religion & Philosophy” section, of course) by Ton Crijnen and Peter Henk Steenhuis sees in football not so much nationalistic fanaticism – but religion (The Football-Church Counts More Converts). After all, the game determines how we allocate our time – certain blocs of ninety minutes on Saturdays, Sundays, and often on weekday nights, too, during the season, are reserved for sitting in front of the set. For many, it simplifies the complexities of modern life, and even provides a meaning for existence. What’s more, it has done this for more and more people over recent years.

Crijnen and Steenhuis bring up in this connection a real-life “church of football” in Argentina, the “Church of Maradona” in the city of Rosario (Maradona was a past Argentine football legend), which claims to have 20,000 members and whose high-holy-day is 30 October, the birthday of their football-playing god. In the Netherlands things have not (yet?) gone to such extremes, but the authors do credit football with an important role of enabling the Dutch to re-discover and confirm their own national identity. “Pim Fortuyn opened wide the sluices of uncertainty [over national identity, but] the Dutch football team closes them shut again.” Victory against the German team is still of crucial importance, but not any longer to differentiate Dutch identity from the Germans, but instead to to confirm their own identity to themselves.

                          

So maybe a big lump of cash can get the Czech team (and coach Karel Brückner who has to make the personnel decisions) serious again about tonight’s game? That is apparently what a group of Dutch firms are hoping, who have grouped together under the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic to offer this reward. And I guess such a thing would not be too out of line with European Championship traditions. After all, just yesterday evening the Italian team failed to advance in the tournament, despite winning its game over Bulgaria, after Sweden and Denmark tied their match at 2-2 – precisely the score they had to make, it turned out, to ensure that they both advanced and that Italy did not. (If either Scandinavian team had won, you see, then the losing team would have had to give up its place in the quarter-finals to the Italians.) So was it a “fix” last night? Most Italians seem to think so; I saw that game, and my judgment is that while there was no way both teams were determined to make the score 2-2 from the very beginning, once it became 2-1 in favor of Denmark the Danish goalie perhaps lost some of his powers to keep the ball out of the goal that he had demonstrated previously . (In prior games the goalie, Thomas Sørensen, had not allowed any goals, and the one he conceded before that second one that made the score 2-2 was from a penalty, which is notoriously hard to keep out.)

IT WAS ALL A JOKE!

Except wait a second: It turns out that the Dutch firms’ “offer” was all a big joke! So reports today the Dutch Algemeen Dagblad, the very paper whose initial reporting of the supposed offer made it credible enough for Sport.cz to feature today. (Yes, they did include a small paragraph: “Chamber [of Commerce] leadership strongly denied for CTK [the Czech Press Agency] the newspaper’s speculation over the offer of a reward”). Yes, it was yet another cyber-prank: someone managed to penetrate and misuse the e-mail system of the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce in Prague, to send out a phony press-release about the supposed reward using the Chamber’s e-mail address and even its logo as well.

Oh well. The Dutch now will just have to hope that the Czech second team has the quality, and the motivation, on its own to beat the German first team, which knows that it will go home in disgrace if it loses. This just might still be possible. In the meantime, Sport.cz reminds us of more bad news, as contained in another article’s title: Undressing Will Bring a Card at the Euro Finale. In their overwhelming ecstasy immediately after scoring a goal, football players these days quite often celebrate by removing their shirt. (Even female players are not above this practice: remember the US’ Brandi Chastain, but don’t get upset Mr. FCC official – she still kept her sports bra on during the incident in question. Another favored alternate is not removing it – talking here about the shirt, not the sports bra – but folding it up and around the head so that they’re running around blind with joy.) But the world governing body for football, FIFA, has passed a rule that this will be punished with a warning from the referee, a so-called “yellow card.” The rule takes effect as of 1 July 2004 – just in time to apply in the second Euro2004 semi-final (not the first, which is to be played on Wednesday, 30 June – aspiring exhibitionists, take note of your last chance!), and of course during the final on July 4.

Update: The spurious Dutch businesses could have saved their phony money, anyway. Germany could not overcome even the Czech Republic’s “B-team” – i.e. the team of players who ordinarily warm the bench, who were in to let the “A-team” rest during this meaningless game – losing to them 2-1, and so taking the next airplane home as their coach, Rudi Völler, resigned.

                          

A full fourteen out of the sixteen leading teams! How could it have come to that? As Respekt author Jindrich Sidlo figures it, the corruption can ironically be traced back to the very poverty of the Czech league. Takings at the gate are small, even given the lower Czech price-level, because attendance is generally small: other than a few high-interest matches, games attract on average around 5,000 spectators. Revenues from the sale of club souvenirs are likewise negligible, and sales of the rights to televise games also bring in very little. But expenses must be paid, including substantial salaries for those stars who cannot or choose not to leave the country to play football, so clubs and the league are heavily dependent on companies which agree to pay to sponsor teams. These count among themselves major firms operating in the Czech Republic – Opel, T-Mobile, ING, Carrefour – but, the thing is, they are essentially only interested in associating their firm’s name with a winning team. Thus the extra payments made to ensure that “their” team wins, although there’s no indication that the sponsors are in any way directly responsible, just that management at the various football clubs knows very well the pressure it is operating under to gain renewal of those vital sponsorship agreements. Thus, as Sidlo puts it, in the grand scheme of things the payments made to referees in that underground parking garage can even be viewed as “investments” to ensure that the sponsorship money turns out to be well-spent.

Perhaps all this only matters to you – as scandalous as it is to witness what is apparently a whole professional league rotten through-and-through – if you are Czech or live in the Czech Republic, and maybe not even then. But Czech football has a unique role in the European football scene as the source of very good players – even as most of them inevitably make their way outside the country to play for most of their careers – and then of course a very good national team when they come together to play for their country in the biannual World/European cup competitions. In this they resemble the Danish and Norwegian national football leagues – good sources of players, even as most leave their native country to play – and these leagues also share the same reason why the native players do this, namely not enough money there to be earned by staying at home. In the Czech Republic this has been due to that being a relatively poor country, which Norway and Denmark certainly are not, but then those Scandinavian lands instead have kept their football leagues at only a semi-professional status, so that players generally have to find an alternative source of money somewhere if they’re going to stick around. Now the Czech Republic simply has gained yet another reason to see its players leave, which is that they will not want to be tarnished by the reputation of what has turned out to be a corrupt league.

BLOW IT UP AND START AGAIN?

That’s if the Czech football league survives at all. Sidlo, for one, draws the logical conclusion from his statement that “no one can believe anymore in the cleanness” by essentially calling for the whole edifice to be blown up and rebuilt again from scratch. Yes, just have the police come in and close the whole thing down, he says – otherwise organized, paid football in the Czech Republic is likely to melt down anyway, as even more fans stay away and, more crucially, no more companies want to get involved in the whole mess by sponsoring or continuing to sponsor. (Although Sidlo concludes his piece on a pessimistic note: Where in the Czech republic, with all its other business scandals over the past decade, are we going to be able to find untainted businessmen to take over and reconstruct the League?)

For now, though, it seems that League officials are continuing to sail on as if nothing is amiss, if a report on the League’s meeting last Saturday in the newspaper that has done the most to disclose the abuses, Mladá fronta dnes*, is any indication. Yes, the final league standings are approved as valid, meaning as usual that the last-place and second-to-last-place teams are relegated to the second division. (There’s no word on whether those were the two teams that kept their hands clean in the whole affair; I don’t think that’s the case.) The only concession to unusual circumstances that was made was that a third team was also to be relegated from the first to the second leagues, Synot, as the bribing-behavior of its officials during the past season was revealed to be particularly bad. Maybe this is just a tempest in a teacup. Maybe it doesn’t matter to Czech football fans that the results of the games they see are rigged, just as a similar situation doesn’t seem to matter to fans of televised professional wrestling. In any event, a mea culpa gesture such as shutting down the whole league just doesn’t seem to me to be very consistent with what I know about the Czech temperament.

*Keep in mind that, as explained on my Czech press page, to find Mladá fronta dnes articles older than a day you’re going to have to register for and negotiate that on-line newspaper’s “Newton” search engine.