View from Germany: Things Starting to Heat Up
It is still early in the morning and Berlin and already I am sweating. It is going to be a hot day when England takes on Ecuador and Netherlands plays Portugal. The temperature is not the only thing that is heating up here. Yesterday we saw some of the best action on the pitch and some of the worst behavior off of it.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me about hooligans at the World Cup and frankly to this point there has been little to talk about. The worst violence I’ve seen is a mother yelling at her son. But things did get out of hand on Saturday in Stuttgart where police detained more than 500 people following a riot that broke out after Germany’s win against Sweden.
The fans were primarily German and English, and it will come as no surprise that alcohol played a part in the violence. Up until this point the fans from England, and really fans from everywhere, had received praise for this behavior.
It is a shame that this story is dominating the headlines in many papers around the world, while the real story in Germany was the game between Argentina and Mexico. It was an even affair that brought us the first overtime action of the tournament, as well as the goal of the tournament to this point when Maxi Rodriguez delivered a beautiful volley into the net.
The win sets up a delightful quarterfinal showdown against the host nation, which put on its on impressive display against Sweden. Hard to believe, but heading into the tournament there was some question if Germany would even escape group play.
The German public is no longer questioning how good their team is and with each win the level of mania goes up another notch here. Each day there are more and more German flags on display and I think that people have permanently painted German colors on their faces.
I’m still sweating as I type this and it is only going to get hotter as the day goes on. Let’s hope that we are treated to another memorable day of football and a quiet day on the streets.
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Comments
By Claude | June 25th, 2006 at 10:57 am 
The heat could get to England. They have had a habit of slowing down in the second half. If the heat becomes a factor in the game we could see our first upset of the knockout stage.
Posted from 
United States
By enzo | June 25th, 2006 at 11:39 am I was wondering when the oddballs and the crackbrains would finally confront each other at this world cup. A bit late this time. Proves their intelligence is genetic and four years to learn a few minor points, like understanding and commonsense is impossible and once one is a dodo he will always be a dodo.
Posted from 
Australia
By Kasam | June 25th, 2006 at 11:47 am Sad to see mentality of the few always spoil it for the rest. Even in England, yobs rioting in London (Canary Wharf) and Liverpool caused closure of large screens, something about cutting your nose to spite your face?
Posted from 
United Kingdom
By alan | June 25th, 2006 at 12:05 pm perhaps they could set a field aside for the idiots who want too knock spots off each other away from the vast majority of decent supporters. then just let them get on with it?
Posted from United Kingdom
By Norbert | June 25th, 2006 at 12:24 pm terrible! Shame on those Hooligans. 
Posted from 
Germany
By William | June 25th, 2006 at 2:06 pm I noticed that in excess of 4000 fans have been arrested up to now http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5112364.stm
This fact is tucked away at the end of the article. Clearly the press has been ignoring regular instances of violence and misbehaviour, while waiting for any instance of problems between German and English fans. Same old story.
Posted from 
Netherlands
By Dave Hamilton | June 25th, 2006 at 3:17 pm I noticed around midnight in our provincial paradise of Heidelberg, where the most excitement is horns blaring, about 9 or 10 police vans rushing with sirens blaring and lights flashing in the direction of the train station I had just left. Hope nothing was up there — unless someone cracked the skulls the U. S. Army bashers I saw the other day. I thought about doing that myself.
Posted from United States
By alan | June 25th, 2006 at 3:35 pm excellent point william. its all about selling papers.
Posted from United Kingdom
By marco | June 25th, 2006 at 7:01 pm shame on you english!
Do you really think you’re fair?
The embarrassing referee allowed you to win.
You’ve lost time in the most mean ways.
Terry should have been kicked out in the first half for unfair play.
He tried several time to cross the Ecuador forwards falling down and asking the yellow card. Once he succeded with Tenorio. Shame on you!
Do you really think the winning free kick was right?
Shame on you usual censors.
You deserved to lose!
Posted from 
Italy
By ben | June 25th, 2006 at 7:07 pm all the teams cant be as good as shitaly marco.
italy will lose to australia and then maybe u will be quiet
Posted from United States
By alan | June 25th, 2006 at 7:30 pm wrong blog marco. actual figures for english arrests during this world cup is less than 5%.like william said only certain countries idiots make the headlines.
Posted from United Kingdom
By delfina | June 25th, 2006 at 11:08 pm I saw the match Netherlands Vs. Portugal and it was a battle.
The referi was very bad and could not control the match.
Portugal played dirtily really.
It was very intense!
By keith | June 26th, 2006 at 1:17 am Marco get real, you call the english players cheats?
you’ve got a nerve son, the world knows that the ITALIANS are the best divers on earth, they were getting scores of 9.9 for the efforts against the americans, that is about .4 more than the olymic record. italians are taught from an early age to act as if they’ve been poleaxed, when in fact, there is usually no contact made at all. SHAME ON THE AZZURI. cheating sods if ever i saw one
Posted from United States
By Simon | June 27th, 2006 at 5:00 pm I completely understand the impression people have of the english when they see incidences such as what happened on saturday night as I have been guilty of looking towards some of our ‘own’ fans in the same way, but having been in the middle of it and doing nothing wrong, I now see what a bad name we have around the world and most of it is down to the British and world press. I alike 397 of the 400 did nothing wrong apart from be in the wrong place when the German police panicked. We were treated disgustingly and the two minutes of madness mostly from german fans resulted in 400 of us being held from 8pm until 4am. We received a bottle of fizzy water after 6 hours and then were finally let go but the tired but reasonably friendly riot police. It was not fun and there was a small amount of trouble but please do not tarnish our own people for 3 idiots. On the whole the atmosphere in town on saturday was brilliant and german fans were mixing with brits for most of the day. On friday night, we had spanish, argentinians, germans, koreans, iranians and ozzies singing with us and fans from around the world took pics and videos of rousing outbursts of ‘god save the queen’. All I say is unless you were there or have been there you don’t see everything.
Posted from United Kingdom
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