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12.03.2002
Tuesday 12 March 2002
At the end of February, the World Football Foundation celebrated its third anniversary. The original partnership of four dedicated football supporters from Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and the USA may not have changed the world yet, but the best things are still to come.
The WFF's World Football Database, located at http://www.worldfootball.org, currently contains information about more than 6400 football clubs from 60 different countries. The website is available in 10 languages currently, with Portuguese translation in the works and due to be completed soon. Work behind the scenes on more features is progressing everyday, not the least of which is a full statistics database for providing information on players, leagues, and competitions. The World Football Foundation also offers webhosting services for clubs, with an upcoming addition allowing those without HTML-programming abilities to create a webpage with the same tools as drafting a document in a word-processing program.
The World Football Foundation though is not limited to its technical abilities. As an organization of football supporters for football supporters, we cannot let current events go without comment.
Last month's announcement by the G-14--the infamous gang of 14 of Europe's wealthiest football clubs--should come as no surprise to anyone. The G-14, calling themselves the "Voice of the Clubs" at their under-construction website, has now called for UEFA to exclude the legitimate champion clubs from Europe's less powerful footballing nations from the UEFA Champions League competition, a tournament originally created to bring together the champions--and only the champions--of UEFA's member countries. The G-14
proposes instead stacking the competition with more clubs from the rich nations of Europe, apparently with the intent that tournament prize money goes to the rich, without a chance for a rags-to-riches tournament run by smaller clubs. Under the current Champions League setup, 15 countries have
at least two competing clubs (3 clubs from the countries ranked 4-6 and 4 clubs from the top 3 countries). Those runners-up, though not legitimate champions, are given byes to later rounds after true champions from the smaller countries eliminate each other. Now the G-14 wants to cut off the smaller clubs so there is no chance a rich club will have to play against a club from Luxembourg, Iceland, or Slovenia? There is no doubt that the "Voice of the Clubs" is the voice of a cannibal seeking the destruction of its brothers and sisters! The World Football Foundation wholeheartedly opposes the greedy and manipulative actions and opinions of the G-14. The football community and UEFA should not tolerate such a collection of pirates in our sport. We sincerely hope that the clubs within the G-14 are not unanimous in Mr Kurth's public position.
We also wish to take this opportunity to address the subject of club cards, cards used to control which fans have access to certain matches. These cards affiliate a supporter to a club and permit that person to buy tickets to the matches of the named club. Under these systems, a fan is only permitted into matches of his/her club, and must sit in a section that only contains fans of that club. The idea behind it, keeping hooligans from accessing matches or parts of a stadium in which they intend to create trouble and possible harm, is noble, but the execution of the strategy is not. A father and son, supporting different clubs, cannot attend matches together; if their respective clubs are playing against each other, they must sit in separate sections. Also, a fan cannot attend another match as a third-party spectator, since the fan can only possess one club's card. Both problems punish the good fans. It would be better, and significantly easier, to allow people to buy tickets with the evidence of their passport or government ID documents. If the fan proves to be unruly and dangerous, as is the case of hooliganism, the government can take action with the passport or ID involved. This is more punishing to hooligans and allows true supporters the flexibility to watch football in comfort, wherever and
whenever they so choose.
We at the World Football Foundation will continue to progress daily and remain at the disposal of the world's football associations, clubs, and supporters. May 2002 be a glorious year for the beautiful game!
The World Football Foundation is a non-profit organization based jointly in Iceland and the USA. Their website appears at http://www.worldfootball.org. For any additional information pursuant to this release or to other
football-related matters, please contact the WFF Director of Public Relations, Michael Raney, via email at m.d.raney@worldfootball.org, by telephone at +1 586 5328120 or by fax at +1 847 6281270, in either English or French.
Cet article est disponible en français. Demandez-le de
fra-020312@worldfootball.org.
Este artículo está disponible en español. Solicítelo de
esp-020312@worldfootball.org.
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