Warriors leave mark on World Cup

World Cup organisers expect tomorrow’s final between Italy and France to draw a worldwide audience of more than one billion viewers. Apart from the live audience and other audiences at the 12 Fan Fests around Germany, the television rights have been sold to 200 countries. And given the current world population estimated at 6.5 billion, the cumulative audience is expected to exceed one billion.

From a number of online polls, Italy is being widely tipped to lift the World Cup at the end of the game tomorrow. Many bets however are on France to win.

An interesting side issue as the World Cup climaxes this weekend has come in reports that because of tight sponsorship restrictions any Trinidad and Tobago supporters wearing a TSTT bmobile T-shirt will have to take it off first before entering the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

TSTT officials yesterday confirmed there were instances during the Soca Warriors’ participation in the tournament where TT fans were asked by German authorities to take off their bmobile T-shirts because TSTT was not one of the corporate sponsors.

TSTT, which took a large group to the World Cup, said fans complied with the German authorities when asked to remove any items bearing the bmobile logo. It declined to say whether or not TSTT was aware that logos of companies which were not World Cup sponsors could not enter any stadia during the games.

During the tournament hundreds of Dutch football fans were asked to remove their trousers (lederhosen) prior to the game between the Netherlands and the Ivory Coast. The reason for this was that the trousers bore the logo of Dutch beer Bavaria which was not a tournament sponsor, but which as one report stated, tried an ambush marketing tactic and produced orange lederhosen (orange being the Dutch team’s official colour) with its name printed on it. Heineken, Holland’s biggest brewery is the team’s official sponsor.

The decision to strip fans was taken by FIFA. “We are not going to tell individuals what to wear, everyone is free to wear what they want,” a FIFA spokesman said. “But if we have evidence that there is a company behind this and there is a visible ambush on the television screens then we have to take action.”

Trinidad and Tobago’s Soca Warriors who played for the first time and were described as the underdogs of the competition proved themselves worthy of being on the football stage in Germany. They mesmerised the people of this country and the world as they held Sweden to a draw, before being knocked out by England in a controversial match where the referee didn’t see a foul on TT’s Brent Sancho by Peter Crouch who grabbed Sancho’s dreadlocks and used him as a stepladder to head in a goal.

Until that moment — seven minutes from the time — TT had held England in a goalless draw. Their eventual defeat by Paraguay removed their chances of making it to the second round.

In the 32 teams in the first round, there were no great shocks, since from the onset of the tournament it was clear that the referees, who were mandated to protect the stars did just that resulting in the big name teams breezing into the second round of competition.

Today, German forward Lukas Podolski was named Best Young Player at the World Cup on Thursday and is expected to be looked at more closely, as will his runner-up Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal. World Cup 2006 saw 141 goals scored, 336 yellow cards and 27 red cards issued.