Hooliganwatch™: The Enemy Within

The news is never pleasant at Hooliganwatch™ headquarters. This past week was an especially tiring one. There was talk of the growing east-west hooligan divide with authorities especially fearful of cretins from Eastern Europe showing up at the World Cup to cause trouble. While a lot of time and effort is being spent trying to shut down these up-and-comers from Poland, Ukraine, et al., some German officials think the biggest hooligan threat comes from within their own borders.

“What gives me headaches sometimes is thinking about how we going to keep our own 10,000 hooligans in line,” said Michael Endler, head of ZIS, Germany’s office for sports information.

Meanwhile, Iran is fearful that its team could be the target of a terrorist attack during the World Cup. Iranian officials are afraid that dissident groups that oppose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will target the team. Speaking of Ahmadinejad, the pressure is mounting on German politicians to ban him from attending the World Cup, especially since some neo-nazi groups plan to march in his support. Stranger bedfellows have never met.

Now that you are probably depressed, we’ll let Mr. Endler have the final words by telling you what he plans to do after the World Cup is over and he no longer needs to think about hooligans. We would encourage all of you to do the same thing:

“I am going to sit in my garden, light up a big cigar, pour myself a stiff cognac and read a book that has absolutely nothing to do with football,” Endler said.