The Hindu : Sport / Football : The parliament can wait

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Thursday, Jun 01, 2006

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Sport - Football

The parliament can wait

LONDON: Lawmakers in Portugal's parliament have accepted the inevitable.

Fearing absences that are common when important soccer games are televised, deputies have agreed to change the times of their regular sessions to make way for Portugal's World Cup match against Mexico on June 21.

The match, which is the last in Group D for the two teams, is scheduled to kick off at 3 p.m. local time.

A plenary session scheduled for that afternoon was moved to 10 a.m., and committee meetings were put off until the game finishes.

Portugal's other group games, against Angola and Iran, do not clash with scheduled parliamentary sessions.

Rah-rah

Germany's national soccer team has a good chance to win the World Cup. At least it does if University of Wolverhampton professor Alan Nevill is correct.

Nevill recently conducted a study that showed crowds affect refereeing decisions, making home-field advantage a huge bonus for the host at the World Cup.

Soccer fans agreed. A survey of 2,517 fans in England by The Football Fans Census found that 98 percent of those asked agreed that referees could be influenced by crowds.

Family affair

Croatia will head into the World Cup with two sets of brothers and a father-son combination.

Robert and Niko Kovac, and Ivan and Jerko Leko all were selected to play for Croatia by coach Zlatko Kranjcar. The coach also picked his son, Niko.

Switzerland also has a pair of brothers, twins Philipp and David Degen. They will be the fifth set of twins to compete at the World Cup, according to FIFA.

Because of a late roster change, Serbia-Montenegro will also head into the tournament with a set of relatives. Coach Ilija Petkovic recently called up his son Dusan to replace the injured Mirko Vucinic. — AP

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