Brian Reade looks at the problem of foreign hooliganism in the Mirror
‘Referee Anders Frisk was lucky that the gushing blood only spoiled his neatly-coiffeured Duran Duran tribute band haircut and turned his Kilroyesque perma-tan a darker shade of orange. Mind you he was only hit by a cigarette lighter. When the Roma fans drew blood from my head as I left the Stadio Olympico back in the 80s it was thanks to a flying crate. I was lucky. A mate's dad was ambushed in a subway and knifed in the guts for having the audacity to wear the scarf of a team Roma had just lost to.
‘Then again I could have been one of the 14 fans from the same English club, hospitalized after cowardly slash attacks (most from behind, on backs, buttocks and thighs) in 2001.
‘Speaking after the Dynamo Kiev game, abandoned after the appalling attack on Fisk, UEFA spokesman William Gaillard said: "We will be looking into the incident but it is really premature to be talking about punishments. It is always possible the person who did it might not be mentally sound. Remember what happened in the marathon at the Olympics."
‘In other words he thinks it could have been thrown by that mad Irish priest in a kilt. Maybe it was the same mad priest and his brethren who donned Roma scarves and rioted at last season's Rome derby, also abandoned after 150 people were injured.
‘Maybe he was in the San Siro in May when Milan's goalkeeper Dida, was repeatedly struck by objects and finally felled by a firecracker thrown by Roma fans.
‘UEFA's cowardice against such behaviour is plumbing depths occupied by the US Congress when it cleared Donald Rumsfeld and his cronies of torturing Iraqi prisoners. Italian football doesn't deal with hooliganism it accommodates it. It encourages the firecrackers, indulges their Ultras, turns a blind eye to the racism and the coin-throwing. Look at Turkey, whose record of violence in Istanbul is shameful. Yet where is this season's Champions League Final being played? Istanbul.
‘The only people worthy of being made examples of are the English. If Fisk had been nearly blinded at an English stadium we'd have had widespread calls for that team to be thrown out of Europe and all European games in this country played behind closed doors.
‘There's no such thing as The Italian Disease or the Turkish hooligan. In European football's petrified world of delusion and self-preservation they are purely English characteristics. Stereotypes as dated as Mr Frisk's haircut. And it's letting the rest of Europe get away with what may very soon be murder.’