Importance of soccer pales to painful life lessons learned this week.

By Robert Wagman
SoccerTimes

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Thursday, September 13, 2001) -- This is obviously supposed to be a column about soccer, but there are times when we are shown that a great deal more exists in life than sport. The traumatic events of this week obviously influence and affect sport and I thought I would briefly share a few thoughts in the aftermath of the tragic events of Tuesday.

Most professional sporting events, including this week’s Major League Soccer schedule were canceled. The United States Soccer Federation canceled the remainder of the 2001 Nike U.S. Women's Cup. Almost every college canceled or postponed its matches this week.

Essentially, the debate is whether you honor the dead by playing or not playing, about whether not playing is "giving in to terrorism." I personally don’t have strong feelings one way or the other.

MLS commissioner Don Garber spoke poignantly today on a conference call of driving in to work from New Jersey Tuesday morning and as he rounded the bend entering the Lincoln Tunnel looking over at Manhattan and seeing Tower One of the World Trade Center on fire. Of the decision to cancel this weekend’s matches, Garber said "We felt we needed to take some time to acknowledge the nation’s loss. Our decision was made solely on the appropriateness of playing these games."

Contrast MLS’ decision, which will probably cost it millions of dollars, with some of the reactions in Europe, either directly or indirectly connected to the terrorist attack.

I found that UEFA’s decision to go ahead with Tuesday night’s Champions League matches almost impossible to comprehend. The European governing body allowed Tuesday night’s matches to be played, but following a torrent of protest, canceled the rest of the week’s Champions League and UEFA Cup matches.

Typical of the criticism, AS Roma coach Fabio Capello, whose Italian Serie A team lost at home 2-1 to Spanish side Real Madrid, said "I think that to play after something like this means we need some new values."

The belated decision to call off the matches was "a notable and guilty tardiness," said L’Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Catholic Church, and Vatican City in Rome. "Yesterday, when the whole world was exposed to the threat of terrorism and while the American people were seized by grief, a choice which can at the very best be considered inopportune was made to play the scheduled matches," the paper editorialized.

I appreciate that sentiment, but my surprise goes more to the pragmatic. Given that it was still completely unclear who was behind the attacks in the U.S., and whether other western countries might also be targeted, to have exposed stadiums full of fans to possible danger, seems incomprehensible. A lunatic who can hijack a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center could fly one into Rome’s Olympic Stadium also.

I am equally mystified at the UEFA decision to force Glasgow Rangers to play their first round UEFA Cup match with FC Anzhi in Makhachkala in Russian Dagestan, on the Chechnya border. Both the British Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department have said directly no Westerner should travel in this area. Car bombs have exploded near the Anzhi stadium in the past month.

Rangers chairman David Murray asked that the match be moved to Moscow for security reasons. UEFA, citing assurances from Russian security forces that the match could be played in Makhachkala, refused to make the venue change. Rangers then tried to get the European Court to intervene. It refused. So now Murray must decide whether to forfeit and face a long-term ban, or risk the lives of his players. Murray

The attitude of UEFA and world governing body FIFA is that somehow soccer transcends reality. FIFA president Sepp Blatter said soccer should be a "beacon of hope" for the world, and that his decision that matches should go on "represents our determination to ensure that football does not capitulate in the face of violence."

"In tragic circumstances such as these," Blatter went on, "football must symbolize the ideals of fair play and non-violence, and encourage people to respect the dignity of each and every human being. The world today is no longer the one we knew. But football must remain a beacon of hope."

Those are wonderful sentiments surely. And in some parts of the world, football certainly has helped defuse some old antagonisms. But soccer on the nation to nation international level, I think, inflames passions more than it brings people together.

I noticed this morning the organizers of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City said they had planned on spending about $200 million on security, but now must go back and vastly increase their efforts. FIFA and UEFA’s efforts to avoid anything having to do with "politics" is simply placing their heads firmly in the sand.

Senior correspondent Robert Wagman's "It Seems To Me . . . " appears regularly on SoccerTimes. He can be e-mailed at bobwagman@soccertimes.com..