Remember the 100,000 World Cup East European sex slaves story?

Well, it was a load of...balls.

Remember the beatroot wrote back in May last year, just before the FIFA World Cup in Germany, that the Catholic News Service reported:

'Polish nuns, anticipating an increase in human trafficking and prostitution during the World Cup in Germany, have issued anti-prostitution leaflets in multiple languages for circulation during the competition.

"Our resources are extremely limited, but we're doing what we can," said Ursuline Sister Jolanta Olech, president of Poland's Conference of Superiors of Female Religious Orders. "We're deeply concerned at reports that men's lives are to be made nicer by importing 100,000 young women from Europe's poorest countries."

The story of the ‘100,000 sex slaves’ originated in the European Parliament (as 40,000) when the matter was raised by German Green MEP Hiltrud Breyer. The Polish nuns then added another 60,000 to the scare for good measure.

So German Greens formed an allaince with Polish nuns (and weirdly, George Bush got involved, too) against the more baser instincts of us thuggish football fan types, who like a nice eastern European sex slave after a good game of footie.

I also noted that the figure of 100,000 appeared to have been plucked out of thin air, much like a goalkeeper plucks a ball from the head of an attacking forward.

Well, Bruno Waterfield of the UK Daily Telegraph has seen a copy of the reports by the Council of the European Union - documents 5006/1/07 and 5008/7 – on the matter, which reveal the real number of the East European sex slaves imported into Germany during the World Cup. One hundred thousand? Well, Waterfield quotes from the report:

‘Of the 33 investigation cases reported to the Federal Criminal Police Office on the grounds of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and/or the promotion of human trafficking, and which took place at the time of the 2006 World Cup, only five cases were assumed to have a direct link to the 2006 World Cup’, concludes the report.

‘The increase in forced prostitution and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation during the 2006 World Cup in Germany which was feared by some did not materialise’,

So not 100,000, or 40,000, but...five.

The next time you see an unholy alliance of a German Green with a Polish nun, keep your cynical hat on, won’t you. Football fans are not a bunch of sex starved Neanderthal things.

Read the rest of Bruno Waterfield’s article here.

Polish football – could things get any worse?

It’s a dismal time to love the ‘beautiful game’ in Poland, but potential remedies could kill off a vital part of the game.

Tomasz Kuszczak will be in goal for Manchester United today as the first pick goalkeeper is injured. There are a lot of good Polish soccer players playing in the British leagues, and they always seem to be popular with the fans.

And it’s not surprising all the talented players get out of the Polish game as soon as they can. Football here is in a sorry state.

Corruption runs through all levels of the game – 70 players, officials, managers are involved in criminal investigations. Things got so bad that in January the government stuck its boot in and suspended the Polish football association. FIFA reacted by warning the government to keep out of the internal affairs of the association as this breaks its rules on government interference in national football affairs.

Add to that the disgusting state of most grounds in Poland, a chronic lack of money and a hooligan problem that makes the current problems in Italy look like a Sunday picnic, and it all adds up to sporting disaster.

But what to do? Many think that FIFA should ban Polish clubs from international competitions for five years or so, as they did with English clubs in the late 1980s after successive hooligan trouble.

English clubs and the British government reacted to the ban by making far reaching changes to football stadiums and the structure of funding the leagues.

Both Italian and Polish football are studying the English example, which introduced often draconian controls over supporters – named tickets, CCTV cameras in every ground, all seating stadiums, etc.

Getting tough could kill off more than just hooliganism

There is much talk in the press at the moment about the Italian ‘ultras’ – which the Guardian, for instance, claims have been responsible for the violence inside and outside stadiums lately.

‘Italian clubs have sucked up to their hooligan element for years, but now they have no choice but to get tough.’

The ‘ultras’ have become synonymous in journalists’ minds with hooligans. But this seriously misunderstands the role of the ‘ulras’, which are not gangs of hooligans but unofficial supporters clubs which aim to keep alive football fans culture on the terraces. As spiked football columnist Duleep Allirajah writes this week:

If all you know about the ultras is what you’ve read in the newspapers, you might be forgiven for believing that they are some kind of hooligan mafiosi led by sinister capi (bosses). In reality they are little more than semi-official supporters’ clubs who make huge flags and banners, organise pre-match tifos or choreographies, run social clubs, arrange away travel, and produce merchandise. There are invariably some tifosi who enjoy the odd punch up but to use the word ‘ultra’ as a synonym for hooligan is just lazy journalism.

The worry is that if the Poles and Italians follow the English example they could risk robbing the stadiums of the intense atmosphere that they currently enjoy. Go to a game at Arsenal these days and you will experience an atmosphere about as exciting as a hospital waiting room. British stadiums have become as quiet as public library reading rooms.

Meanwhile the antics of Polish football fans and the atmosphere they create when the games are in play is often extraordinary. fans really are part of the game here, not just spectators.

So I hope that Poles and Italians do kick the corruption and hooliganism out of their stadiums, but leave us some of the atmosphere, please! Let’s not turn Legia Warszawa’s ground into a British one, full of prawn sandwich eaters who would be better off going to the theatre for their entertainment.

More?
Appro to nothing in particular, see this Youtube clip of the campest ref you wll ever see in your life!

Hooligans United

Polish thugs are favorites to win this summer’s World Football Hooligan Cup in Germany.

Many were injured, over two hundred arrested and hundreds of thousands of zloties worth of damage as fans from Legia Warsaw rampaged through the Old Town district of the capital last weekend.

But this was no isolated incident. Six people have been killed in soccer related violence already this year in Poland.

Football hooliganism seems to be reaching a new peak. The government – led by the crime-populist, Law and Justice party - have announced a ‘no tolerance policy’ towards the thugs.

And they are right to do so. Polish football hooligans have been acting as anti-socially recently as have …well, Polish politicians.

Something must be done about both of them, preferably before the World Cup starts in June.

But top thugs from the top clubs have vowed that they will be out in force and solidarity in Germany this summer and aim to take over the top hooligan spot from their closest rivals, the English.

According to the UK Sunday Times:

[Polish thugs ] say they will be seeking “pre-arranged fights” with travelling England fans because of their reputation as “the best of the worst”. One group of Polish hooligans has warned that if the English “ignore invitations to fight, they will be attacked anyway”.

The London Times reports on the kind of person who will be going to fight for Poland:

“It will be the battle for Berlin,” Andrzej said, with a crooked, toothy grin. Clasping a can of beer and singing obscene anthems, he is one of the estimated 250,000 Polish supporters who will be travelling to Germany next month, with or without a ticket.

Oh, dear.

Short history of Polish hooliganism

The growth of rival gangs emerged during the mid 1970s but communist media ignored it.

The first time it was caught by the cameras was in 1981 during the TV transmission of a game between Legia and Widzew when fans invaded the pitch.

In the 1984-5 season 99 incidents of football related violence were recorded. By the mid 1990’s the police were recording well over 1000 a year.

After a relative decline in recent years the hooligans have been particularly active this year and last.

Hooligan World Cup

The authorities are fretting about what to do. They are studying the way the UK got rid of the problem it had in the 1980’s: by using a membership scheme, all ticket matches, blanket CCTV surveillance at grounds and heavy policing outside.

What amazed us here in Warsaw last weekend was how easily the fans could travel from Legia Warsaw’s ground south of the center of the city, right across to the Old Town to the north, get really, really drunk and smash the place up.

Where were the cops and what were they doing? Playing pocket billiards?

The Interior Ministry has issued around 600 wararrants for known trouble makers to be stopped at the border when trying to enter Germany.

England have issued about five times that number.

The first really big match that the cops are expecting boots to fly is the Germany against Poland match on June 14 in Dortmund.