Saturday, July 01, 2006

Fifa fury at Berlin match fracas

Furious Fifa president Sepp Blatter confirmed it will investigate the ugly scenes which marred Germany's quarter-final victory over Argentina.
Punches and kicks were thrown between both sides following Germany's penalty shoot-out success in Berlin.
Blatter told Five Live Sport: "I am furious about that and our disciplinary committee will monitor this incident. We will take some steps towards those who are identified as being the 'provocateurs' of this incident."
Blatter added: "There was really no need. After 120 minutes football is a drama, and then you have to go to penalty kicks and then football becomes a tragedy, but one is the winner and one is the loser. What I always say is in football you learn to win, but you also have to learn to lose."
Germany's Torsten Frings said of the incident: "They (Argentina) are bad losers. They lost their minds."
Argentina's unused substitute Leandro Cufre was shown a red card for kicking Germany's Per Mertesacker in the melee. The German defender said: "They are no choirboys. One of their players attacked me even though I did not do anything. I have three or four red marks on my thigh and then he kicked me again in the groin." Germany's Frings said they tried to calm the Argentina players down, but added: "It just shows they are bad sports and are badly behaved. I hope their players get suspended."
Argentina coach Jose Pekerman, who was criticised for taking off playmaker Juan Roman Riquelme when they were 1-0 up with 18 minutes to go, resigned after the quarter-final defeat.
Germany will now face Italy in the semi-finals after the Azzurri saw off Ukraine 3-0 on Friday.
Posted by Samvit :: 5:32 PM :: 0 comments

Post a Comment

---------------oOo---------------