Game without Frontiers

I HADN'T BEEN in Quincy Market more than five minutes when a young kid bounded up to me, with a giant grin on his face, and asked whether I was "one of those soccer hooligans?".

He actually seemed disappointed when I told him I wasn't, which perhaps isn't so surprising when you consider that the previous day's Boston Herald - a Rupert Murdoch paper, natch - had carried a virtual 'Beginner's Guide To Lager Loutery' and a well known sportswear manufacturer have recently taken to advertising their wares with the tagline, "In Europe they would riot for this stuff."

The American public have somehow developed this romantic notion of marauding footie fans being latter-day Robin Hoods, loveable rogues who are to be applauded rather than condemned for their dickbrained behaviour. They obviously haven't seen the damage which can be inflicted with a well aimed Doc Marten or one of Mr. Stanley's famous knives.

This bonhomie towards potential trouble makers doesn't extend to the US Soccer Federation who, having witnessed the pitched battle between Norwegian police and England supporters a fortnight earlier in Oslo, were determined that their dress rehearsal for World Cup '94 wasn't going to be marred by violence.

As one of, ahem, Graham Taylor's red, white and blue barmy army myself, I can testify that it's only a small percentage of England's away support who go to games looking for a scrap rather than a bellyful of beer but when it does "go off", you'd better get out of the way or prepare yourself for a guided tour of the local casualty department.

The English FA supplied US Immigration with a list of all known hooligans and, visa or not, if your name flashed up on the computer screen, you weren't getting into the country.

As a result, 20 fans disembarking at Logan Airport were told they were going straight back to Heathrow and two of their compatriots joined them the following morning after getting mouldy drunk and urinating in front of a frankly not very impressed police officer.

As American sporting cities go, Boston is far from typical. The large Irish and Italian communities ensure that, in certain quarters anyway, the fortunes of Manchester United and AC Milan are followed with just as much fervour as those of the Bruins or Red Sox and my first night in town was spent discussing the relative merits of the Wimbledon long-ball game with a construction worker called Antonio, who idolises John Fashanu.

While still very much a poor relation to baseball, basketball, ice hockey and football of the gridiron variety, soccer is beginning to make headway as an armchair spectator sport. The ESPN and HTS satellite channels carry extensive highlights from the top European leagues and no doubt encouraged by the 'dollar spend' of US Cup '93 sponsors Adidas, ABC made network history by screening the whole of the USA's game against Germany live and without commercial interruption. Far from the massacre that most pundits had predicted, the home side were desperately unlucky to lose by the odd goal in seven and their thoroughbred performance has convinced the network to show 11 of next summer's 41 games with ESPN securing the rights to the remainder.

Someone who's convinced that soccer will take off in the States, if promoted properly, is Pelé. Looking disgustingly fit and healthy at a book signing session in Harvard, the greatest number nine of all time recalled that, "When I played for New York Cosmos in the former North American Soccer League, we had crowds of 60,000 to 70,000 while my team in Brazil - Santos - were lucky to get 35,000. They were in a good position but then they started fighting with the television and fighting with the media and they lost eight years of work.

"During Cosmos' heyday, I could sense the enthusiasm and that was for league games. If the American team does well in the opening round of the World Cup, you'll see a change in the competitive mentality. The whole country will start rooting for them."

The press hysteria greeting the USA's shock and, it has to be said, thoroughly deserved 2 - 0 drubbing of England at Foxboro Stadium suggests that Pelé is probably right. Americans aren't used to international competition and losing to 'third world' countries like Honduras and Bermuda, as they have in the past, is not good for national self-esteem. Put one over on the old colonial enemy, though, and it's an entirely different story.

Apart from being the only ground in the Boston area with a pitch wide enough to meet FIFA regulations, Foxboro has been selected as a World Cup '94 venue because it's so easy to police. A 40-minute train ride from downtown, the rather characterless home of the New England Patriots is located at the heart of a vast expanse of wasteland with the nearest population centre three miles away. There's only one road in and one road out and no maze of side-streets for your more military-minded hooligan to engage in ambushes or pincer movements.

Reflecting afterwards on the success of the $100,000 operation, US Soccer Federation official Doug Arnot said that, "I thought the security looked impressive but not oppressive. We had 25 state troopers in the stadium and the K-9 response team. I don't think it was overdone but with the state of the world today, you have to be prepared for every possibility."

'A K-9 response team', in case you're wondering, consists of eight very big and very fierce Rotweillers and eight equally ferocious handlers. You can't fault them for lack of man or animal power but, incredibly, the Soccer Federation's security arrangements didn't extend to segregating fans inside the stadium. Although this is far more dignified than being herded like cattle into a penned enclosure, it also means that the hooligan element are free to roam the terraces and at Foxboro it was a miracle that the only punches traded between a group of British Movement skinheads and tricolour-draped Noraid supporters were verbal.

Quizzed about the policy at the post-match press conference, FIFA chief executive officer Joseph Blatter revealed that the governing body will probably insist on crowd segregation for the finals but are totally opposed to the erecting of perimeter fences. "Cage supporters like animals," he remarked, "and chances are they'll behave like them."

Soccer Federation Chairman Alan Rothenberg, a man who's turned evasiveness into an art form, was also in surprisingly lucid form.

"If England don't qualify, it's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, obviously, a country with that tradition in the sport, a country where 99.99 per cent of the fans are phenomenal, fans that we'd love to have here - it's unthinkable in some ways that they wouldn't be part of our World Cup. But on the other hand, if they don't come, and their crazy hooligans don't come either, I can catch a few hours more sleep.

"But," he added, "it wouldn't mean all our problems would be over - we've got Asian qualifiers going on right now with Iran, Iraq, North Korea and South Korea, and you can only imagine the kind of security detail we'll have to engage in if one of them ends up here."

Whatever else, the Americans are unlikely to welcome a reenactment of the Gulf War on their own soil - especially when the head of the Iraqi FA is Saddam Hussein's son, Uday.

Iraq meet Japan and Iran clash with Saudi Arabia in the last round of Asian qualifiers on October 10th. and you can bet your life that Alan Rothenberg will be awaiting both results with bated breath and a change of underwear.

For anybody used to the crumbling terraces at Dalymount or the makeshift surrounds of the RDS, World Cup '94 promises to be a culture shock of epic proportions. While most English and Irish stadiums date back to the early part of the century and were designed with capacity rather than comfort in mind, their American equivalents are veritable spectator paradises.

The seats at Washington's RFK Stadium, for instance, are big enough to accommodate the most ample of posteriors and unlike here where you're more likely to find Salman Rushdie in a ground than beer, a loud yell will result in an ice cold bottle of Bud being thrust into your mitt. You won't be able to feast on lukewarm Bovril or year old Cornish pasties at half-time but there are hot dogs, nacho chips and tacos for the ritual feeding of the 50,000 and toilets that you can powder your nose in afterwards without contracting typhoid.

RFK also boasts an improbably large video screen which bursts into life every time there's a goal, narrow miss or '18' rated tackle. Imagine - if all goes according to plan against Spain and Northern Ireland, you'll be able to watch Paul McGrath clattering into opponents next summer in glorious technicolour close-up.

Decent food, action replays and a modicum of comfort, I can live with. What rankles - and here I guess I'm indulging in sporting snobbery - is the way in which the US Soccer Federation are desperately trying to Americanise the game. Understandable from a marketing point of view, I suppose, but do we really need organised cheerleaders, 'most valuable player' ceremonies and crass p.a. announcements of the "Soccer fans, if you're sitting near the pitch, please remember to always watch the ball" variety? And there was me thinking we'd coughed up $30 to admire the athleticism of the linesmen.

They could also do with a crash course in terrace culture. After all, what is the beautiful game without the accompanying soundtrack of "Two world wars and one world cup, fuck off!", "You're so shit it's unbelievable" or that quaint Irish ditty, "Who put the ball in the England net?" which has so delighted me and my fellow countrymen since Stuttgart?

Purists may baulk at the prospect but next June sees the Pontiac Silverdome near Detroit playing host to the first indoor game in World Cup history, with 2,000 hexagonal panels of grass being slotted together jigsaw-style to provide a perfect natural surface. The patchwork pitch got a trial run during US Cup '93 when Germany beat England 2 - 1, coach Berti Vogts enthusing afterwards that "this is something of a miracle. The grass is perfect. The hall is magnificent."

The by now thoroughly deflated Graham Taylor was less impressed. "The beauty of soccer," he opined, "is its uncertainties. The more uncertainties you take away the more boring it gets. I wonder when I look at a stadium like this, is it taking away some of the uncertainties and beauty of the game?"

The Silverdome's pitch may be a wonder of horticultural science but with the temperature underneath the Teflon-coated dome hovering round the 100 degree mark and the humidity well over 40 percent, Big Jack will probably be hoping for the chance to by-pass Detroit.

Not that it'll make much difference where the games are played - the Soccer Federation have, in the majority of cases, opted for one o'clock kick-offs to accommodate foreign TV networks which means that Mick Byrne is going to have to pack plenty of sunburn lotion along with his magic sponge.

The fear that some of next summer's games might be played in half-empty grounds has, meanwhile, been allayed by US Cup '93 attendances averaging 45,000 per match. The complete domestic allocation of one million tickets was sold out in a matter of days, which means that Irish fans are going to have rely on the FAI rather than friends or relations in the States for those all important admittance-gaining bits of paper.

An FAI spokesperson said this week that, "if Ireland do qualify for the World Cup, we won't know precisely how many tickets we're going to get until nearer Christmas. Obviously, we'll press for as many possible but it's inevitable that some fans are going to be disappointed."

On the granting of visas, she continued that, "if necessary, we'll talk to the Americans and as long as people planning to travel meet with the standard requirements, I don't envisage any problems."

Neither, I suspect, does Big Jack but I'm sure he'll be as relieved as anyone if Ireland manage to come away from Landsdowne Road next week with their unbeaten record intact. As for England - well, I reckon we'll see you in the semi-finals!