FA to monitor the fans

THE FA will have a team of stewards placed among England supporters for the World Cup qualifier against Scotland at Hampden Park on June 10 in a new move aimed at combating crowd trouble.

There will be around 8,000 England fans at the game and no one wants another occurrence of the unacceptable behaviour that marred the friendly against Germany in Dortmund in March and at Celtic Park against Scotland in November 2014. The FA have already suspended 34 members of the England Supporters Travel Club. They will now be pursued by the UK football policing unit, identified from video footage.

And the Scottish FA, who are upping their own security operation from England’s last match north of the border, will use facial recognition surveillance technology to help identify persons of interest on the police database — although seasoned hooligans, aware of the cameras, now do their best to cover their faces.

AFTER

the removal of the ethics chamber pair who had investigated FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s use of private jets, it didn’t go unnoticed that a luxury jet belonging to new FIFA sponsors Qatar Airlines arrived at Manama Airport following the FIFA Congress in Bahrain. FIFA did not say if the aircraft was used to fly Infantino back to Switzerland.