FA and Branson verging on the ridiculous

SINCE this is about the Football Association, let's begin in time- honoured fashion. What a muddle, what a mess. When even Richard Branson's accursed Virgin Trains can claim the moral high ground, you know you've got a cock-up of the first order.

That's exactly what the Arsenal-Tottenham FA Cup semi-final has become.

Branson says the FA didn't consult Virgin about travel plans.

They say they did. Virgin say that even if they did lay on a weekday service only 10 per cent of fans could travel. I think that's tosh.

As far as I'm concerned, if Branson even half-deserved the title of "Britain's favourite businessman" he would sort it out.

As for having a go at the FA, he's right. Defending a 1.30pm Sunday kick-off in Manchester on busy weekend, with the trains in chaos and the motorways stuffed with enough cones to reach from here to eternity, an FA spokesman blandly observed: "The priority is to ensure that as many fans as possible get the chance to see the game and savour the unique atmosphere that FA Cup semi-finals always create."

It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. The truth is all the FA have actually done is guarantee a day of misery for anyone reckless enough to venture far from their television set.

Which is precisely what they did at the Worthington Cup Final when they allowed Cardiff City Council and the local police to channel fans in a totally different way than they employ with rugby supporters, causing frustrations and delay on a scale rarely experienced before.

Many people who left home before dawn got back well after midnight, yet we still haven't had an explanation, far less an apology from the FA, nor any guarantees it will be any different when the playoffs and the FA Cup Final go to Wales in May.

In two respects, though, the FA are not to blame for the entire fiasco.

They did try Stamford Bridge but it didn't work out for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that Ken Bates and David Dein rarely see eye to eye.

Chelsea have to complete the West Stand. The contractors, who are on strict time penalties, were told months ago that this would be a clear weekend and are working through it. To abort these arrangements now would have caused serious disruption and required the FA to pay a large sum in compensation. No one thought this appropriate, and they were right.

The police have once again played a malevolent role. In order to play the game at Old Trafford, the FA had to consult, and accept advice from, all the police forces between London and Manchester.

It was out of that bedlam that the absurd proposal to play the game at 1pm, later varied by half an hour, emerged when it would have been far better to have played the Villa Park game first.

Which leads to the inevitable question: why do the police have these draconian powers years after serious football violence ended? No reason, of course, and the FA are paying the price for lacking the guts to take the police on publicly over this.

The police approach is both arbitrary and unreasonable.

Earlier this season, the Met had no problems coping with an important Chelsea home game the same evening as Queens Park Rangers entertained Fulham.

But the West Midlands force refused to countenance the Worthington Cup semi-final between Birmingham and Ipswich going ahead on the same night as Aston Villa were playing in the Premiership. What's the sense in that?

As usual, it's the fans who lose out. No one is battling for them while these largely spurious belt-and-braces arguments about security go on.

A better solution by far would have been to toss a coin to decide whether to play the game at Highbury or White Hart Lane.

Strangely, both clubs rejected that possibility - and they must carry some of the blame for that.

Turkish turmoil must be stopped

GALATASARAY are at it again. This time pitch invasions and violent clashes with French fans and police left 56 spectators injured, all but one of them French, and their match against Paris St-Germain in Paris had to be suspended for 25 minutes.

But instead of firm action from UEFA, all w e g e t a r e m o r e excuses.

The French stewarding was awful - so what's new? And they failed to take account of the number of French-based Turks who got tickets and sat in the French sections.

Again, not unusual.

What is obvious, yet again, is how volatile these Turkish fans are.

On Galatasaray's own a d m i s s i o n , w h a t sparked off this mayhem was a single Kurdish flag being waved.

But that's likely to happen everywhere they go. So how many people have to end up dead before UEFA's patience is exhausted?

Season after season lame excuses are accepted from Istanbul clubs when we all know that if English fans had done any of this we would never hear the end of it.

Misfiring Gunners are a TV turnoff

THE whole team played their hearts out for Arsenal on Wednesday night. Yes, thank God for Spartak Moscow.

There was a surreal moment when the ITV cameras cut from the Munich bore and switched to Moscow for the last few minutes of the match with Lyon.

Suddenly, you were seeing a real contest.

Playing only for pride and earning a few per cent at best of what Arsenal's superstars rake in, the Russians put on a show.

Quite why an ITV interviewer congratulated Arsene Wenger on his success, I shall never know.

But at least, Wenger had the decency to look embarrassed.

Still, I'm delighted Arsenal are through. Not least because the Spanish-English carve-up of the last eight seems to guarantee a fourth Champions League slot for England the season after next.

But Arsenal's "success" exposes once again the Champions League's chronic elephantiasis, and what an interminable yawn-fest it is for us poor couch potatoes.

Arsenal won only two of their six games in the second stage, scoring six goals and conceding eight. Yet they're still in, showing just difficult it is to get eliminated.

Who knows, since they surely can't play this badly next time, they might even give one of the fancied Spaniards a shock.

A few random thoughts about Wednesday. Nwankwo Kanu wants away, his agent says, and if a serious offer is made Wenger should bite their hand off. This "big-match player" seems completely out of sorts and lacking any serious motivation.

As for Gilles Grimandi, if he were for sale, the best offer for him is likely to come from the Kit-E-Kat factory - but even that should not be rejected out of hand.

I discovered another reason why I'm glad not to be German. The TV coverage was awful. All those lingering cutaway shots to celebrities in the stands, and endless close-ups of players standing at the other end of the pitch from where the action was going on, were awful.

But I suppose it was one of those games where the less you saw of it, the happier you ought to be.

Refs are too shirty

ENOUGH'S been written on the sending-off of Wycombe's Steve Brown to need little more from me, but referee Steve Bennett's defence - "I was only obeying orders" - shows the bankruptcy of refereeing arrangements.

The yellow card for removing shirts is to go, and FIFA president Sepp Blatter thinks paying refs will solve the problems, but it won't.

That will only happen when referees capable using power with discretion emerge.

Too many officials are now drawn from the lowest ranks of middle management, where they are expected to be jobsworths. How naive to think they'll have a total personality change once they get out their whistle.

Games bid blues

PEOPLE who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

Which is why my heart sinks at the thought of a London bid to stage the 2012 Olympics.

I used to be all in favour of such things but experience shows we always foul up, and we will continue to do so until our sporting infrastructure is sorted out.

The campaigns for the 2006 World Cup and the 2005 Athletics World Cup, instead of being a spur to get these fundamentals right, proved to be a distraction.

The big projects that should have been completed to house them are as distant a prospect as ever. So my strong advice is, forget it.

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