It’s a Success, if You Skip Failures
The FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee, which met Thursday to review the competition after the completion of 62 of the 64 scheduled matches, declared France 98 an overwhelming success.
However, the two main blots on the event--the problems surrounding availability of tickets and the violence in Lens and Marseille--were not discussed at the behest of Lennart Johansson of Sweden, the committee’s chairman.
Horst Schmidt of Germany, FIFA’s head of security, said the group must work more closely with civil authorities in each city to reduce the risk of disturbances in the streets outside the stadiums.
Officials in charge of security did say, however, that they considered their efforts successful, despite the savage beating in Lens that left a policeman in a coma and despite the widespread damage done in Marseille by English hooligans after the England-Tunisia game.
Dominique Spinosi, head of security for the organizing committee, and Schmidt said their $20-million program that involved 6,000 workers and years of planning maintained the peace in stadiums and assured safety for fans.
Referring to those events only as “incidents,” Spinosi said it would have been impossible to secure areas outside stadiums. “If we had decided we were going to turn our French cities into bunkers, we would have failed in our task,” Spinosi said. “We have seen that football is an enormous festival. We didn’t want to spoil the fun.”
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FIFA’s reconstituted Executive Committee also met Thursday, with outgoing President Joao Havelange formally handing the reins to successor Sepp Blatter.
