CITY AND SUBURBAN
Euro 2000 is Wim's idea of a beautiful game but the Brits play by different rules
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Britain faces exclusion today as the bars and restaurants of Brussels clean up after the week of disorder which has left an indelible mark oh Euro 2000. 'They are spoiling our beautiful game,' says white-haired, loqua- cious Dutch grandfather Wim Duisenberg. `We are not used to these currency hooli- gans.' He had helped to launch Euro 1999 with champagne and balloons and, in spite of an embarrassing sequence of own goals, con- tinues to regard it as a technical success. He sees his tournament as essentially friendly, a Europe-wide series of international currency fixtures, so called because the score-lines are fixed in advance, thus avoiding uncertainty. The British, he says, seem to play by different rules. There is a long tradition of market hooliganism among the City of London's dreaded Chaps in Red Braces. At the advent of Euro 2000, people who are holding down respectable weekday jobs — merchant bankers, airline chairmen, economists, cabi- net ministers — take sides and start fights. Rival fan clubs like the Red Robins and the Grey Gordons have to be kept apart. For this week's game in Fiera they booked separate aircraft and, when the flights were consoli- dated, a barbed-wire partition was quickly installed between club class and steerage. Warned that he might be barred from over- seas tournaments, a fan of the the Grey Gor- don said that in that case he would send Melanie Johnson. That would show them. He had spent enough time being lectured by foreigners with much to learn from him and little to teach him. He has laid down his famous five tests for joining the Euro league, and maintains that, as the referee, his deci- sions is final, but he may find that the league's refs have ideas and red cards of their own. Indeed, to be excluded would be the best result for Britain.
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