Only football issues are set to stop David Beckham getting his hands on the
Euro 2004 trophy in Portugal.
Lennart Johansson's full backing of the Football Association this weekend
amounts to a virtual withdrawal of the threat to throw England out of the
tournament if their supporters misbehave.
The UEFA president exonerated the FA of blame for any problems which may
occur, accepting they had done everything they could to clean up the English
national game's festering sore.
Expulsion may not have been an idle threat but it was hard to see what it
would ever achieve.
At best it would heap shame and outrage upon a few hundred mindless morons and
at worst it would instil them with a perverse sense of pride.
While blameless Beckham and co were jetting back to Britain with their dreams
and those of a large proportion of the nation in tatters, the yobs would simply
have something else to get angry about in downtown Lisbon.
Johansson's support - in direct contradiction to the statements made my some
of his UEFA underlings last week - is correct.
It is hard to see exactly what more the English authorities could do to
prevent trouble save sealing off the country completely four weeks before the
tournament starts.
Long gone are the days when stadiums themselves provided the battle grounds
and instead a minority of troublemakers without tickets - and with no intention
of trying to obtain them - set up camp in the city's bars.
A real threat of expulsion would play into the hooligans' hands, not to
mention the lunatic fringes of the other nations, smelling a fine chance to get
one of their rivals sent home in shame.
It would achieve nothing but the alienation of the majority of law-abiding
England supporters who have paid good money through proper channels simply to
join with their country in the continental football jamboree.
All of which is not to be too harshly critical of those UEFA chiefs who would
push their president hardest to pursue the ultimate sanction.
They have torn their hair out for decades over the behaviour of English
supporters abroad and can hardly be lambasted for seeking new ways of improving
the situation.
As the Football Association have found out, there is no such easy solution.
No amount of membership schemes and travel restrictions and even ticket
allocation refusal will stop all the people hell-bent on getting into another
country to cause trouble.
But it will all go at least some small way towards reducing the arrest figures
and shifting the focus back to what it is all about.
David Beckham lifting the Euro 2004 trophy and the whole of England basking in
undiluted pride.
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