Fitba Hell

LET’S for a moment set aside whether Match of the Day’s first female commentator is any good, and consider instead the calibre of those criticising Jacqui Oatley. The wits behind an internet petition calling for her sacking have dubbed themselves Woman Commentator On MotD - Go Back To The Kitchen. Meanwhile, Dave Bassett – the man whose thuggish teams did for football what Sex Lives of the Potato Men did for life-enhancing cinema – opined that a female commentator’s higher-pitched voice is offputting. If these hilarious dolts are her main opposition, Oatley should feel no more threatened than a Rottweiler set upon by a couple of mentally deficient hamsters.

FLORENTINO Pérez had a go at Victoria Beckham recently for allegedly distracting David Beckham from his football. Pérez appeared uneasy with the thought that Posh might just be the stronger partner in the Beckhams' marriage, and turned this strength into evidence of a dastardly use of feminine wiles to undermine an unwitting husband.

The same thing happened to Yoko Ono many years ago - a male-dominated world was uncomfortable that one of its most prominent pop-cultural icons appeared in thrall to a powerful woman. It's a scenario triggers the most unreconstructed of male reactions: undermine that horrible, threatening woman at all costs. So Ono got tarred as a gold-digger, and, when she's not being accused by away fans of a fondness for sodomy, Posh cops flak from Pérez for her husband being past it.

A crackpot idea, surely? England has three teams in the European Cup semi-finals; Manchester United blew away any lingering thoughts that Italy had the best league in Europe.

Maybe, but the really significant news in English football this week is the failure of the FA Cup semi-finals to sell out. The football association's showpiece trophy, "the best cup competition in the world" has lost its lustre.

Blackburn, remember, is only 30 or so miles from Old Trafford, where Rovers' tie against Chelsea will be played. A fan on the radio today, who claimed not to have missed a game since the seventies, said it just cost too much to take his kids along - adult tickets cost up to £55. Meanwhile, as fans of Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool celebrate their success in the Champions Lerague, the flipside is that supporters of every other side are getting bored with the impregnability of those three, along with Arsenal, in the top four of the Premiership.

The patience of football clubs' core support is being eroded. The authorities won't mind too much as long as big business is taking an interest, but how long can that be guaranteed with the apparent hooliganism making a comeback?

The bubble is swelling fast.

THE Italian police are brutal, the Ultras are out of control. Manchester United fans had the misfortune to be caught between the two and were utterly blameless. So you'd think by reading much the press coverage today of last night's violence at the Roma-Manchester United game, where United's fans are portrayed as meek little lambs to the slaughter.

Yet last week I went to the Scotland-Italy match in Bari, where there was not a hint of last night's trouble. It was the same story last month when Celtic played in Milan. Why the utterly different scenarios in a country where football violence is supposedly a nationwide scourge?

Perhaps the reputation of English fans precedes them, and the carabinieri and the Ultras fancied testing their mettle. But few commentators seem to have considered another factor; for all the efforts to prevent known hooligans travelling abroad, there remains among some English fans a confrontational, no-one-likes-us-we-don't-care attitude, a volatile disdain for the host country.

I write from experience of Frankfurt last summer where, for all the credulous media coverage about a new breed of friendly English fans, the overriding memories of being among tens of thousands of white-shirted beer guzzlers are of leering chants about how the RAF "from England" shot down German bombers, and bobbing past the spittle of pumped up teenage boys bellowing that there would be "No surrender, no surrender to the IRA". Far from a league-of-nations togetherness, I saw Germans looking nervously over their shoulders any time a group of ruddy-faced drunkards stumbled past.

The glossy new vision of English football that Sky and other marketeers have peddled over the last 15 years has no room for unsavoury violence, and it seems that most pundits have taken this spin as fact. The Sun is the most strident defender of the English male abroad, whether he's in fatigues or an acrylic replica top, and today went for the default headline of "Brutal cops beat Man U fans." The internet allows dissenting voices on Rupert Murroch's baby, however, and one Italian fan who claims to have been at the game suggested that United fans were responsible for much of the trouble by throwing objects into the Roma end after the Italians had scored the opening goal; "Hooliganism is in the English DNA," he suggests.

None of which is to excuse police brutality or Italian thugs, or to take sides in apportioning blame for last night's scenes. But our friends down south are mighty complacent, not to say a little deluded, if they truly believe the English disease has been cured.