Posts Tagged ‘FIFA’

North Korea commands international football fans on its own right as mysterious dark horse

North Korea may be a pariah in the international community as it flaunts war rhetoric and brinkmanship, but its World Cup squad is obviously warming up to the hearts of international football fans drawn to the mysterious underdog.

The last time the North made it to the World Cup finals was at the 1966 tournament in England. The country ranks 105th among FIFA members, the lowest among the 32 World Cup finalists this year.

The North Korean team is in Group G, the so-called group of death, which includes four-time World Cup champion Brazil and top-ranked contenders Ivory Coast and Portugal.

Despite being the first Asian team to advance to the first round of the World Cup finals, the North Koreans have been largely invisible in the international football arena. Their most notable achievement besides the England World Cup feat was reaching fourth in the AFC Asian Cup in 1980.

Top contenders may enjoy rock star celebrity status, but modest fan pages on the communist country are also appearing on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

“I think a lot of people are interested in the team … as they are the dark horses and an unknown element of the tournament,” Simon Cockerell, a China-based Briton who opened a fan page on Facebook, told Yonhap News Agency through e-mail.

Cockerell’s page has gained some 300 members as of Thursday. The 32-year-old is an employee of Koryo Tours in Beijing, which has been running tour programs to North Korea since 1993.

Said to travel to North Korea regularly every two or three weeks, Cockerell described the page as “a forum for discussion” on the North Korean team, but added it is not in any way involved with the North Korean government or its politics.

Yannick De Buf, another fan of the North Koreans living in Oostende, Belgium, runs a fan page on Facebook named “The North Korean Football Fan Club.” He described the North Korea’s squad “one of the strongest teams” in the Asian qualification series.

“Ever since I was little and read about their World Cup participation in 1966 and (North Korea) becoming the first Asian team to progress beyond the first round of the World Cup finals … I have been rooting for them, the underdog of international football,” De Buf said.

Roberto Distinto, a 30-year-old fan of the North Koreans from Italy, the football powerhouse which the North Koreans upset in 1966 to advance to the quarterfinals, noted that football is a game in which anything can happen.

“Sometimes, especially in soccer, not always the strongest wins,” said Distinto, who said he became interested in North Korean football during the 2002 South Korea-Japan World Cup.

“I remember that the South Koreans set up the stadium with a big ‘Again 1966′ flag,” he said, referring to the South Korean fans’ ardent wish that their team would reenact their Northern compatriots’ feat against Italy, which it did.

Jos Van Eycken, another Belgian fan in Brussels, said he chose to support the North Koreans as they are in the “absolute underdog position” at this year’s World Cup finals.

“We chose to support North Korea because Belgium is not in the World Cup, and we wanted a team which we all could support,” Eycken said.

A small but dedicated number of football fans in South Korea have also kept close tabs on North Korea’s football team and its players throughout the Asian qualifiers, coining nicknames such as “the People’s Rooney” for the team’s forward Jong Tae-se.

“I think South Koreans are hoping that our compatriots perform well, especially this year as they are confronting overwhelming foes such as Brazil and Portugal,” Kwak Jae-ho, a 31-year-old office worker, said.

Kim Dong-kyu, an athletics professor at Yeungnam University, said that the attraction to North Korea is not only from the team’s stellar performance in their journey to South Africa, but also from the overall scarcity of information coming out of the country.

“The limited media exposure, not only on its World Cup squad but the society as a whole, appears to be feeding the small but significant fan base,” Kim said.

FIFA probe dismisses allegations about Russia-Spain World Cup bribery claims

FIFA rejected allegations on Friday by the former head of England’s World Cup bid that Russia was planning to bribe referees at this summer’s tournament in exchange for Spain pulling out of the running to host the 2018 competition.

Lord Triesman resigned as England’s 2018 World Cup bid chairman after his comments, which were recorded in secret by a former employee, were published in a British newspaper.

FIFA said it had “found no indication that there is any basis to the allegations reported”.

World football’s governing body also reminded bid teams that they should display the “highest standards of ethical behavior”.

The English FA wrote letters of apology to both the Spanish and Russian football associations after the incident.

In his defense, Triesman said his claims were “never intended to be taken seriously”.

Russia is competing with England, Australia, the United States, Spain and Portugal and Belgium and the Netherlands to host the World Cup in 2018.

FIFA will appoint hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on December 2.