Sunday, Jul. 02, 2006

The 2006 FIFA World Cup: The End Is Near

By MICHAEL ELLIOTT

The smiles continue. after Germany defeated Argentina in the quarterfinals of the World Cup last week — in a penalty shoot-out following a 1-1 tie — Maria Michalke, 21, stood in the Berlin crowd, hundreds of thousands strong, that celebrated the victory. She kissed her dog Nero, who, like her, was draped in a German flag with a black, red and gold flower chain around his neck. "I am so happy," she said, snapping pictures of the crowd. "I am not interested in football, but the World Cup has been so great from the start that it is simply carrying me away."

Not everyone ended the week happy — and even fewer will be thrilled with life by next Sunday night, after the final. But the wonderful sense of an international festival that has been evident from the start continued into the Cup's penultimate week. It was a period that separated the real deals from the pretenders. By the time two knock-out rounds had been played, four teams were left, all from Europe for the first time since 1982 — and three of them, at least, were among the game's aristocrats. A German team dismissed at the start of the tournament as one of the weakest for years, reached their fifth semifinal in the last seven tournaments, and Italy their fourth. France, the winner in 1998, overcame a slow start to the Cup to beat Brazil and reach the semis, their ageing leader Zinédine Zidane giving a master class of football, and Thierry Henry scoring a superb goal. In the semifinal they will play Portugal, the smallest nation of the final four, and to an extent the surprise package of the tournament. But even Portugal was the losing finalist in the European championship in 2004 and its team has long been expected to challenge for one of the game's glittering prizes.

Along the way, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and the Netherlands, four of the teams that had most delighted crowds in the opening stages, went home early, the latter two in circumstances that were far from happy. There was an on-field brawl after the shoot-out in the Argentina vs. Germany match, while a sparkling Dutch side was defeated by Portugal in a bad-tempered, worse-refereed game that saw four players sent off and an additional 12 awarded yellow cards. Of the rank outsiders, the two that progressed furthest and pleased most were Ghana, who fell to Brazil — no shame in that — and Australia, who were desperately unlucky to lose to Italy by a hotly disputed penalty, awarded with only seconds remaining. England went out too, beaten 3-1 in a quarterfinal penalty shoot-out by Portugal, but for three weeks had been so inept and uninspired that few but their most devoted fans mourned the team's passing. Ironically, England played their best football when the two demigods of the London tabloids, David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, were off the field — Beckham with an injury, Rooney after being sent off following a disgraceful, ugly stamping of an opponent, right under the nose of the referee.

England's passionate fans — indeed, the fans of every nation who came to Germany — have been remarkably well behaved. Given the heat, the fervor, and the quantities of beer that English fans like to consume — though the Dutch and Swedes can keep pace with them — some drunken rumbles were to be expected, and happened. But the real fan violence that some feared would mar the Cup has for three weeks been conspicuous by its absence.

In large measure, that's because the type of fan who shows up for the World Cup is older and less likely to look for trouble than some of the hooligans who hang around Europe's top clubs. But it's also a reflection of improved policing by European forces. "We've learned from our experience," August Hanning, Germany's Deputy Interior Minister, told TIME. "We know that we have to deal with some fans who are prone to violence, and over the past few years we've developed better strategies to deal with the challenge." Among those strategies is a database of violent fans that the Germans first established in 1992. "Ahead of certain games," said Hanning, "we paid [potential troublemakers] a visit and told them it would be better if they stayed home. We neutralized the few people who tend to build the nucleus at an event that turns violent."

German police won high marks from English fans, as they kept a low-key presence and watchful eye on those arriving in Gelsenkirchen for the game with Portugal. "There's none of that tension you sometimes get with the cops when England fans travel," said Nigel, a Londoner. And in a successful innovation, the Germans shared the load with police officers from other European countries. That made sense; it takes a Dutch officer to know how to handle an orange-clad, beer-soaked, broken-hearted — again! — bunch of fans from the Netherlands, and the supporters themselves seemed to appreciate seeing familiar uniforms. A French fan who identified himself only as "Laurent from Strasbourg" said he was both surprised and oddly reassured to see teams of French gendarmes on a joint patrol with German police in Leipzig. "It was almost like seeing another French fan, I suppose," said Laurent. "My reaction was more 'Ah! One of us,' instead of 'Ugh, the cops,' which is how I usually think of them back home."

Hanning cautions against any smiley-face conclusions. "What we can say now," he reasons, "is that our concept of close cooperation with foreign security forces and intensive preparation have had very positive consequences. But in order to make a final evaluation, we have to wait for the end of the World Cup. We all have the experience of Munich 1972 in our minds, when the Games began very festively and then suddenly there was a terrorist attack."

If it is understandable that the awful shadow of the Munich Olympic Games still hovers over every international major sporting event — especially one in Germany — it should not be allowed to obscure a more joyful truth. The World Cup is one of the great celebrations of our time, one where the prizes don't go to the traditional superpowers of politics and economics. (The U.S. and Japan didn't make it out of the first round; China didn't qualify.) But those who made it to Germany, for the most part, put on a display of skill that gave millions of us the sort of tiny thrill that makes life worth living. Proof needed? The performance of Zinédine Zidane last Saturday night.