Monday, June 24, 2002
Fair play, please
Jeff Powell in Gwanju
The great game robbery goes on and on, clouding this World Cup spectacle with dark suspicions of fraud and conspiracy.
The South Korean phenomenon can no longer be taken at face value. Something sinister seems to be lurking beneath the story-book facade of this odyssey of the underdog.
Romantic though the Red Devils might appear and refreshing as their whirlwind football may be, they have no right appearing in tomorrow's semi-final.
The Koreans have been beaten twice in everything but name. That, after being given more outside assistance towards an earlier victory than an old man in a wheelchair would need to climb Mount Everest.
They have made history not on merit but by some mysterious intervention which, if not divine, has to be dubious.
Once can be an accident. Twice could be coincidence. But South Korea have benefited three times from decisions which, when viewed together, give the impression of being as biased as a crown green bowl.
The Portuguese claimed they had been cheated. Then the Italians. Now the Spanish. Sour grapes? Not after the most grievous injustice at the weekend.
Portugal had two players sent off. Italy had a valid golden-goal winner disallowed, and now, most grotesquely of all, Spain have had two good goals, any one of which would have prevented their quarter-final going to penalties, and probably a normal-time penalty ruled out.
To make it all the more sickening, Spain had begun to look like the class act of a World Cup in bad need of quality superseding surprises in its final stages.
The term upset has taken on a different meaning from when it was used to describe the premature elimination of Argentina and France.
Not only are the Portuguese, Italians and Spanish upset but also everyone who wants to believe the global game is as honest as it is beautiful.
FIFA has received almost half a million angry e-mails and no doubt more are on their way from Spain.
The writers mostly suspect that influences even more powerful than the rabid Korean crowds are being brought to bear on the referees and linesmen.
Although the most common accusation is that the World Cup organisers want an Asian team to prosper to keep public interest here alive, the protesters may have an unexpected ally.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter is himself talking critically of the officials. In so doing, he may be taking an oblique swipe at one of the richest and most ambitious power brokers in Asia.
Chung Mong-Joon was one of the most outspoken opponents of Blatter's re-election. He is also thought to be using his positions as president of the Korean Football Federation and co-chairman of their World Cup organising committee to launch his political bid to become president of the country.
To that end, Dr Chung is riding the wave of patriotic fervour by using such words as 'emancipation and liberation' to describe how 'football has been the catharsis through which we have discovered that we are one people again'.
The question is whether the means are as noble as those ends.
The Korean people dismiss doubters, especially the Italians, as bitter whingers. But if something is amiss, they would also be victims of a terrible deception.
England rigged the 1966 draw so they could play every game at Wembley and there will always be a vigorous debate as to whether the vital second goal in Geoff Hurst's World Cup Final-winning hat-trick really crossed the German line.
But we have never seen anything which looks as blatant as this.
Now, unless everything about tomorrow's game in Seoul is transparently fair, we shall find ourselves in the contrary position of rooting for the Germans.
posted by sunny @ 12:45
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