By Peter Snowdon The obelisk of the Place de la Concorde must wish it had never left Luxor. Adrift on a dark sea of petulant Renaults and indifferent Citroens, it recently welcomed a host of unfamiliar visitors, a regiment of steeplejacks intent on shinnying up an impromptu scaffold to balance, on top of the ancient structure, nothing other than a gigantic inflatable football. The World Cup has come to France -- and don't we all know it. Close friends, distant relatives, long forgotten business contacts, all suddenly discover they can no longer afford a hotel room and turn up on our doorstep at midnight to beg a corner of a sofa bed or a spare mattress. The Persian cultural centre by the Canal St Martin has removed all the kilims and zarba from its window, and replaced them with T-shirts at FF120 extolling the virtues of the Iranian football team. Every Irish pub, every Japanese restaurant, every Tunisian tea shop, assures us as we pass that they are the only place in which to enjoy The Event in its devastatingly over-extended entirety. Our obligations, though, are not only to enjoy, but to be instructed. It is not even possible to take the metro any more without being forced to admire some revelation of pure Argentinean tango, or discover through a finger buffet the national cuisine of one of the smaller republics in Group Six. While the country received the approved representatives -- not more than 22 at a time -- of 32 countries for their four-week activity holiday, the state was preparing to expel some 80,000 unapproved representatives of over 60 nations, many of whom may have helped to build the St Denis stadium, only to find themselves forced to occupy churches or declare hunger strikes in order to stave off the threat of deportation. The various competitors are by now safely ensconced in the more glamorous suburbs, where they can be greeted by a "positive" image of France. The Jamaican squad has been housed in a rather elegant chateau, and TV news duly showed how the villagers, all of old stock, "spontaneously" dressed up as Rastafarians in homage to their guests -- and in the hope of persuading them and their supporters to patronise the local shops. Meanwhile in St Denis, where the finals will be held, the communist mayor is organising a continuous carnival to run throughout the competition. St Denis is not a glamorous suburb. Few people there have the influence necessary to obtain a ticket legally, or the money to buy one on the black market, where prices start at FF2,000 (LE1,000) for the early rounds and FF15,000 (LE7,500) for the finals. Of the 6,000-plus jobs promised by the organisers, barely 1,000 have materialised. According to one friend, who teaches in a technical school nearby: "The carnival is basically a safety valve. Without it, there could be an explosion." Joao Havelange, outgoing president of FIFA and the man who has done more than anyone else to turn the beautiful game into a pressure cooker of financial aspirations insists that "football is power." It is also a global business which now turns over approaching $300 billion a year. The World Cup in particular is a license to print money, and as such is fiercely fought over, not only by the teams competing, but by host nations and multinational sponsors. Japan and Korea between them spent upwards of $100 million on their bids to host the tournament in 2002. Nike recently signed a 10-year $300-million deal with the reigning champions Brazil. The terms of the contract remain secret, but are widely believed to allow Nike to influence both team selection and the choice of opponents for friendly matches, thus placing their marketing interests before the technical needs of the squad. Of the tickets for France 1988 that were left after the French Federation had taken the lion's share, half were allocated to corporations and other institutions. The BBC's reporter, using a hidden camera, even managed to film a tout offering him tickets which he claimed had been passed onto him for resale on the black market by the World Bank. When confronted with the evidence, the tout admitted everything, but argued it was only natural that a black market should exist, given the nature of the present system. On Monday, Joao Havelange was succeeded as president of FIFA by Joseph "Sepp" Blatter. The World Bank, meanwhile, denies all allegations. (you may now proceed to the Sports page)
