Football
19y

Soccer-Beckenbauer slams last six months as a disgrace

(Note strong language paragraph four)

FRANKFURT, Feb 17 - The last six months have been
an embarrassment to German football as the country prepares to
host the 2006 World Cup, Franz Beckenbauer said on Thursday.

"We've been a disgrace for half a year," Beckenbauer,
president of the World Cup organising committee, said in a frank
interview with German soccer magazine Kicker.

"Since last July we've been virtually incapable of action.
It's got to stop. We must get back to normality."

He added: "We've been sitting in the shit for six months."

The long search for a replacement for coach Rudi Voeller,
who resigned in June after Germany's first-round exit at Euro
2004, was the first major incident to get in the way of World
Cup organisation.

Since then, a messy compromise deal over the presidency of
the German Football Association and the current match-fixing
scandal have continued to keep attention away from next year's
tournament.

Robert Hoyzer, the 25-year-old referee at the centre of the
scandal, has admitted fixing several matches and is under arrest
on charges of suspected fraud. Berlin prosecutors are
investigating a total of 25 people.

Beckenbauer said the country needed to turn attention back
to the World Cup, especially with the Confederations Cup now
just a few months away.

"I look forward to us getting away from the sideshows,"
Beckenbauer said. "In four months we have the first big test in
the Confederations Cup but no one is talking about that."

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