Diamond in the Elephant Dung & Hooligans Fight Corruption

After 10 days of watching several matches a day my enthusiasm was beginning to wane. Many of the matches were becoming very boring. It began to feel that you could turn the TV set on at 90 mins and you wouldn’t have missed anything, indeed you would be just in time for all the action.

It wasn’t that all the football was deliberately defensive, and was the defending that good? Or is it the lack of decent strikers that has seen teams like German and France struggle to score. Was it really that the NI keeper was the new Lev Yashin, or more that Gomez was the new Giroud. There was a lack of the killer touch in the penalty area, and that included penalties. Altough watching Ronaldo miss a penalty was a joy to most fans not from Portugal.

But it wasn’t only the lack of goals in most matches, and this is one of the worst Euros ever for a low scoring rate at this stage, it was the lack of urgency and team work, the lack of ambition.

Did the Spanish fans realise the risk they took as they ole’d their team at 1-0 up v Croatia, didn’t they realise that here was the one team at the Euros that likes to play football, will take risks, and not sit back for a draw.

Only a few days earlier Croatia had been thrashing the Czechs only to be disrupted by their own fans, losing concentration and losing their lead. At the time I was disgusted by the fan’s behaviour but things are more complicated than they appear, and I will make more comment about this later.

However, I digress; let’s get back the main theme, Elephant Dung, that is to say that the arrogance of the Spanish and their fans had come to typify the boredom and ennui of the last few days. Suddenly Croatia exploded, running, harrying, passing and scoring, they gave the Spaniards a lesson in what Ole’ football truly is. They were the Diamond in the Elephant Dung

Croatian Fans Revolting?

So why would any fan try to disrupt these Brazilians of the northern hemisphere? Were they really mindless thugs we should all condemn? According to the mainstream press these were hooligans to be locked up or deported, or preferably both. No explanation was given, but thanks to a contributor to Arsenal Times I have discovered some web sites that explain what the grievance was. Most Arsenal fans will be surprised to learn that the story also involves two former Arsenal players, Davor Suker and Eduardo Silva, the first as an alleged villain in the role of an allegedly corrupt football official in a corrupt federation, the second as a slave to the on trial Mamic brothers.

These revolting fans are accusing the Croatian Football Federation of corruption and of allowing slave contracts, they want to defeat the FF even if that means getting Croatia expelled from the Euros. The case for the fans is reported here .

The Guardian reported on an impending trial of the Mamic brothers here.

Nacional reported on Eduardo still being held to a slave contract by Mamic (2010) here .

If these stories are true they have implications far beyond Croatia, did English clubs know about these contracts? How could they not know? That internationally known players such as Modric and Eduardo have become embroiled in this is astounding . Is UEFA shielding a corrupt Football Federation and what does that mean for UEFA.

We saw how corrupt FIFA operated in South Africa, one local responded with Fick FUFA, is it time to Feck FEFA?

Rather than condemning the Croatian fans that rebelled maybe we should be recognising that they too are a Diamond in the Elephant Dung.