Charleroi hopes for a Waterloo!

Charleroi hopes for a Waterloo!
Jayaditya Gupta

``We might as well go on holiday together and take the families,'' England coach Kevin Keegan told his German counterpart Erich Ribbeck. He wasn't planning a new Anglo-German axis; this was a reference to that fact that England and Germany, already drawn in the same qualifying group for World Cup 2002, are pitted together with Portugal and Romania at Euro 2000. The England camp is, predictably, rattled; Germany, as this column viewed last week, are England's bogey team and would have been better avoided.

Their nerves couldn't have been helped much by Ribbeck's comment acknowledging the match-up, but pointing out pithily that the group winners would be decided by who won the Germany-Portugal match. Touche, because Portugal are a team at least as strong as England. They possess, in Luis Figo and Rui Costa, two players who can tear the opposition to shreds.

If anyone fears the England-Germany encounter more than Keegan & Co, it's the police in Charleroi, the small Belgian town where the match will beplayed. They have much to fear; English fans need no introduction, and German supporters sent a French gendarme into a coma at last year's world cup. The small size of the stadium (capacity 30,000) will only add to the tension. The only glimmer of hope comes from history: Charleroi is a few miles from Waterloo, where the English and Germans joined hands to defeat a certain Emperor.

The saving grace for the English is that they are not in Group D. That will be the group of death, with France, Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Denmark battling it out for two places. Group C is slightly better placed, with Spain and Norway looking favourites to qualify past Yugoslavia and Slovenia. Group B is tougher to pick; there's little to choose from among Belgium, Sweden and Italy.

The draw, going by seeding, favours a Germany-Netherlands final. That will be sometime in early July; before that, there's bound to be a lot happening both on and off the pitch!

The cup that jeers: It's a strange feeling: Mid-December,and the Third Round of the FA Cup already under way. There was a time when you could set your calendar by the English sporting season. The first test match on the first Thursday in June, the League beginning in mid-August, the Five Nations beginning in winter, the FA Cup Third Round on the first Saturday of January, the final on the first Saturday of May. No longer; cricket and football dates have taken a tumble, and the Rugby Union calendar is also under threat. In the FA Cup, at least, the strain is beginning to tell.

The timing of the third round when the top-flight clubs join the competition was such that it came in the lull following the Christmas-New Year rush. This year, the matches brought forward by the FA because of `heavy congestion' in the fixtures schedule next have come bang in the middle of the pre-Christmas rush. With the result that the average attendance at matches is down by a whopping 3,000 over last year, and 5,000 over five seasons ago.

Sadly, the re-scheduling is only one reasonfor the drop; sadly, because the only other reason possible is the diminishing attraction of the FA Cup. One pointer to that is the fact that several Premiership matches this weekend the last before Christmas have sold out. The opting out of cup holders Manchester United with the help of the FA took away more lustre from the competition. Suddenly, the world's oldest football competition is showing its age.

Old is gold: One institution not showing its age is AC Milan, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this week with the launch of Italy's first club TV channel. Milan's is an interesting story; formed by British expats, they adopted their red/ black strip to invoke the Deviland inspire fear. Their most dazzling period was in the 50s and 60s, when they boasted an international star cast spearheaded by Gianni Rivera. Then came a slump, followed by an amazing resurgence financed by Silvio Berlusconi; the team was powered by the Dutch trinity of Gullit, Rijkaard and van Basten, with Franco Baresi thepeerless captain.

Jayaditya Gupta can be contacted on e-mail at: joygupta@express2.indexp.co.in