Countdown to kick-off...

3. So Michel Platini is against Uefa's policy of retroactively punishing players who cheat. Currently, if a player "simulates" (Uefaspeak for diving) and, in the process, cons the referre he can be punished after the fact. I don't have a problem with the fact that the head of an organization is against his organization's own policy – in fact, it shows a sense of democracy -  but I rather think Platini is missing the point.  He argues that punjshing an offender won't compensate the victim.  That's true, banning Diego Maradona for the Hand of God goal in 1986 would not have been much of a consolation for England.  But the reason we punish miscreants is not tor edress misdeeds but to set deterrents. It's what separates us from "eye for an eye" societies where you can commit a crime, pay "blood money" and get away with it.  We believe in punishing people to deter them and others from doing certain things.

2. There is a cast-iron guarantee at every World Cup or Euro. The organizers will introduce a new football and the goalkeepers will complain about it.  It had happened again, with first Jens Lehmann, then Gigi Buffon and now Petr Cech saying the new ball is too light and too unpredictable.  I'm not a physicist so I have no idea if they're correct. But what I do know is that there has been no steady increase in goals at major tournaments over the past twenty years.

Which would imply that one of two things is true: either the players have gotten so good that we need more unpredictable balls to avoid a goal drought or the goalkeepers are talking out of their rear ends.

1. And you thought the "Achtung! Surrender!" headling from Euro 96 was the nadir of jingoism?  Think again.  Sunday night's clash between Poland and Germany is turning into a tasty grudge match. Except, like most grudge matches involving the Germans, they could care less about their opponents (as Holland and England found out, it's a rather one-way rivalry).

So as Zbygniew Boniek, Poland's greatest ever player, scientifically points out that his countrymen are "sixteen times" as intelligent as the Germans and one polish newspaper publishes a photomontage of Leo Beenhakker, the Poland coach, holding the severed heads of Michael Ballack and Joachim Loew  the teutonic response has been rather muted. "The Poles are our dear friends," says Theo Zwanziger, head of the German FA.

Comments

[kash]

hwats pu wthi eth seplling msitakes Gab?

[armen]

Boniek's name is Zbigniew.