Backslappers have lot to answer for

EURO 96 has been such a backslappers ball that UEFA's and the English FA's top brass run the risk of sustaining severe spinal damage. Bert Millichip, the FA's octogenarian chief, was at it again yesterday. These people are above reproach or self recriminations of any kind.

Everything is going swimmingly. Variations on mea culpa are not in their vocabulary. Despite pre tournament assurances of a 95 per cent turn out (a figure obviously plucked from the sky) at the venues by Euro 96 organiser Glenn Kirton, empty seats have abounded, right up to and including the three quarter finals excluding England.

Even by the scarcely credible and seemingly inflated official attendances over the weekend, there were at least 27,715 empty seats at Old Trafford, Anfield and Villa Park. Some might argue that given the perceived quality of the quarter finals, and the lack of goals, the absent fans demonstrated a good sense of judgment.

More likely it just underlined the insularity of football supporters here. As for the lack of goals, particularly in extra time, and the staggeringly poor refereeing standards which significantly undermined the quarter finals, UEFA must for once give their collective backs some respite and apportion some of the blame to themselves.

UEFA it was who decreed that we would have the Golden Goal in extra time with the net result, of course, that there would be no extra time goals at all. Designed to forestall the dreaded penalty shoot out, the initiative has merely made the shoot out more inevitable. Indicative of the extra time periods that applied in Saturday's quarter finals, teams became even more reluctant to gamble on pushing men forward. With the outlet of more time to obtain an equaliser, teams may have been more inclined to gamble. Not now.

Even those open minded or supportive of the idea have quickly conducted a volte face, Terry Venables and his England players among them.

What's wrong with playing on for another 28 minutes if one team scores two minutes into extra time? As Bertie Vogts observed last week, if the Golden Goal is the result of an error for the player involved it's as horrendous an experience as a missed penalty in a shoot out.

A minimum of 30 minutes allows fairer play in giving greater opportunity for the better team to win out. It's also one of the great traditions of the game. The Italy West Germany semi final of 1970. which went from 1-1 at the end of normal time to 4-3 half an hour later would instead have finished in a 2-1 win for the Italians. Football would have been denied a classic.

Similarly, we would have been denied the drama and five extra goals of the 1982 World Cup semi final between France and West Germany which went from 1-1 to 3-3, as well as the Euro 84 semi final when France recovered from a 2-1 deficit to Portugal with a rousing two goal flourish in the final five minutes of extra time.

As for the latest directives to the referees, this has not only led to a rash of 144 yellow cards and 21 red ones, it has almost obliterated the art of tackling from the game and, what's more, handed the advantage to the divers of whom there are legion in these championships.

This was compounded by the choice and performances of the officials at the four quarter finals. Inconsistencies compounded mistakes. The roughest, nastiest game of the tournament (namely Germany Croatia) induced just three yellow cards and one red. One of the least offensive (until Portugal lost their heads with a small degree of justification), was the one at Villa Park, which hardly went a minute without a free kick and resulted in 10 yellow and one red.

Spain had a perfectly legitimate goal disallowed for offside and a justifiable penalty was never awarded, while the Dutch were not awarded a potentially decisive penalty and Croatia's Nikola Jerkan was blatantly fouled by Markus Babbel in the build up to Matthias Sammer's winning goal for the Germans.

All three teams are now out. Where's the Fair Play in that?