Bobo at Euro 2000

Prog contributor John "BoBo" Bollenberg also helped out during Euro 2000, the European soccer championship organized in both Belgium and Holland. As John only lives 1 km away from the Jan Breydel Stadium in Brugge, Belgium, he thought it would be a fine thing to enlist himself to contribute to this one-off organisation. Because of his journalistic input, John was dispatched to help out in the Local Media Centre in Brugge, which means assisting the matches between France vs Denmark, Czech Republic vs France, Spain vs Yugoslavia and a quarter final. His "job" means assisting the various television commentators in giving them the latest information and also helping out during the press conferences. This has enabled John to have a chat and take photographs with Spanish striker Raul Gonzalez Blanco, probably the current most expensive player in the world, Fabien Barthez, Bernard Lama, Christian Karembeu, Youri Djorkaeff, Emmanuel Petit And Nicolas Anelka all from the French team plus legend Berti Vochts who, as ex-captain of the German national team, is now an official UEFA representative. During the very first match John attended it is interesting to know John stood approximately 2 meters away from Lennart Johannson, the president of the UEFA and Joachim Prince of Denmark. Also French president Chirac was rumoured to attend but he didn't show. In fact every match is a new challenge and attracts 30,000 people to the stadium in Brugge. "If only I could've played some prog music through the stadium's speakers," muses John. May the best team win!"

Rick Wakeman comments on Euro 2000 in an e-mail to John on 6/24/00:

"I really envy you at the Euro 2000. I would love to see a Portugal / France final. I know France are the favourites, and look pretty unbeatable but they also have the most pressure on them. For this reason I fancy Portugal, but am not ruling out Italy as 'dark horses.' They were given no chance by the Italian people and press, but whilst not having the artistry of the French or Portuguese, have phenominal resiliance and could just surprise everybody. The other dark horse is Spain although I think they will not make the final this time around.

I, like millions of other Brits, are 100% ashamed of the hooligan element from England that have seriously tarnished our game and team. Most Brits are also ashamed of our government, who we feel had four years to prepare for what they knew would happen, and did nothing. They claim they didn't have the legal powers. They have been in government for four years and had plenty of time to prepare laws in time that would have prevented 99% of all the trouble. Unfortunately this pretty much sums up the present government. They are 'great' talkers, but have actually done nothing of any substance since their arrival in office.

I don't think it would be fair to ban the England team from International competition , but I do think the answer would be to just sell International tickets from one official source and to ban any English supporter to any foreign game who had not bought a ticket from this source. People without tickets would also not be allowed to travel to that particular country unless they could irrefutably prove that they had legitimate business in that country. A prison sentence would be guaranteed for any person caught breaking these laws.

Two or three years of this would cure the problem as the hooligan element, whilst sadly perhaps not disappearing from British society, would at least move somewhere else. I love my football, but am totally ashamed of what happens every time we play anywhere and even more disgusted, as are many others, by the weak and pathetic statements made by our government.

They are now saying that the hooligan element will cost us the 2006 World Cup. I hope it does, and it pains me to say it.

Best wishes as always...................Rick

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Published on: 2000-06-30 (2301 reads)