Eye on the Hooligans

The madness continues A French gendarme was fighting for his life late on Monday after a vicious attack blamed on German neo-Nazi hooligans ...

The madness continues

A French gendarme was fighting for his life late on Monday after a vicious attack blamed on German neo-Nazi hooligans following Sunday8217;s Germany-Yugoslavia match. Pas-de-Calais prefect Daniel Cadoux said the victim, 43-year-old father of two, Daniel Nivel, remained in a coma and could not be operated on for the time being. However, doctors revealed that the gendarme had suffered permanent brain damage.

Former German international Uwe Reinders proposed playing a benefit match for the injured French gendarme. Reinders, who played for Werder Bremen before a spell with Bordeaux.

German newspapers condemned the brutal attack on a French gendarme by German hooligans in editorials and said the assault proved that hooligans are not indigenous to any one nation. quot;That a festival for sport is threatening to turn into a battleground for thugs is bad enough,quot; The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung paper said.

An English fan was rushed to hospital on Tuesday after beingstabbed in clashes following Romania8217;s 2-1 defeat of England. Three other people suffered slight injuries and police detained 12 others in isolated incidents after the match in Toulose. Eleven of the youths held were French, several of them armed with baseball bats. The other was English.

An English journalist was recovering in hospital after being attacked by a gang of English hooligans. Andrew Woodcock, who works for Press Association, was on his way to cover the England-Romania clash when he was attacked. The gang accused him of giving England supporters a bad name and threw him to the ground against a concrete bollard, breaking his collar bone.

Four more English hooligans were expelled from France yesterday as part of a new security strategy allowing authorities to pick up known troublemakers without waiting for them to cause problems.

British hooligans could face a five-year ban on travelling to matches abroad, under proposals for new laws being considered by London.