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May 31, 2006
Stupid Soccer Tricks
These are trying times for some Swedish feminists. The national soccer team has passed on the idea of publicly protesting the extra prostitutes (or sex slaves as the case may be) imported into Germany for the World Cup competition; women bosses in private and publicly traded companies has dropped from 32 percent in 2004 to 25 percent today (sorry, it's in Swedish); and the World Cup team from Paraguay is angling for babes.
That last item isn't such a big deal. But it is amusing that one soccer player's lame attempt to score with a Swedish photographer was the top headline of a Swedish paper this morning (thanks for the English translation, DN). It seems that a player from Paraguay was smitten with a female photographer for Dagens Nyheter (the Daily News). She is part of a reporting team that briefly interviewed some team members and then covered a game between Denmark and Paraguay.
According to today's paper, FIFA, the international soccer organization that runs the World Cup, employs "team liaison officers" to help national teams with various tasks, including translating media interviews. After the Denmark-Paraguay match, Paraguay's liaison officer, Manuel Hoffmann, reportedly called the DN photographer at 1 am to say a soccer player wanted to meet her immediately "to get to know her a little better" (translation is mine).
This strikingly original line failed to work any magic for the player involved (although DN managed to squeeze out a fair number of column inches about it). The photographer went back to sleep but wondered the next day (along with her fellow reporter and at least one editor) why the hell an official FIFA employee would help a soccer player chase women. The liaison officer refused to comment on the record but supposedly told one reporter that it was hard to say no to a player when a whole gang of guys were standing around. (Maybe it seemed easier to dial than face a beating with a cleated shoe.)
In the Swedish article DN helpfully points out that players are supposed to behave "for the good of the game" and that FIFA's Article 7 bans gender discrimination (although it's unclear to me how this qualifies as gender discrimination).
It also mentions that two Chilean players got shipped home after a training match against Ireland because women visited their rooms after the match. Guess the Paraguayan player is damn lucky the photographer turned him down instead of going to his room with a camera and a tape recorder.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at May 31, 2006 08:52 AM