[FIFA<20] Melee a global dust-up


Recommended Posts

Melee a global dust-up

Jul 21, 2007 04:30 AM

MORGAN CAMPBELL

daniel dale

STAFF REPORTERs

A clash between Toronto police and Chilean soccer players after an Under-20 World Cup game Thursday night morphed into an international incident yesterday after the altercation made front-page headlines in Chile's morning newspapers.

The Canadian embassy in Santiago received a bomb threat and angry Chileans protested outside the embassy with signs reading "Racist Canada."

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet called the actions of police "clearly not justified," and Chilean Foreign Affairs Minister Alejandro Foxley sent a diplomatic note to his Canadian counterpart, Peter MacKay, "to make them understand the malaise in Chile over what happened, the excessive violence, and to formally ask them to give us a detailed explanation of why this happened and who is responsible."

World soccer body FIFA said yesterday it was launching an investigation into the incident.

Back in Toronto, while rumours swirled that the Chilean team would skip the end of the tournament, the team announced it will play its consolation final tomorrow with as many as 14 injured players, several of them hurt in the post-game rumble with police.

According to eyewitnesses, police used pepper spray and a Taser to subdue members of Chile's team during an altercation near the team's bus after a testy semifinal loss to Argentina at the National Soccer Stadium at Exhibition Place. Nine Chilean players, including three of the team's stars, were detained but not arrested.

"You can't treat people, who have gone there to represent Chile in a sporting event, like this," Foxley said at a news conference.

A spokesperson for MacKay would not comment on the row.

In Haiti, the last stop on his four-country, six-day trip abroad, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters: "As we know, these international soccer matches are hotly contested and often become very emotional. As you know, there are processes in Canada by which the authorities review these kinds of incidents and I don't intend to comment further."

Toronto police Chief Bill Blair said officers were forced to intervene when Chilean players got into an argument with a fan and "decided to direct some of their aggressive behaviour towards my officers."

He said officers acted in a "firm but fair" manner. "They are trained to do so, and that is what they did," Blair said in a prepared statement.

Chilean player Arturo Vidal disagreed when asked if the players started the fight.

"No, no. There was no provocation (from Chilean players)," he said outside the Westin Harbour Castle hotel yesterday. "We only wanted to talk to the people and (the police) attacked us like we were dogs."

Other Chilean players agreed. "We went to talk to the fans," Isaias Peralta told Chile's leading newspaper, El Mercurio. "The police wouldn't let us pass and all of the sudden one pointed a gun at me. I didn't know what it was, and all of the sudden they shot me with electricity."

Peralta, who still bore two red marks on his ribcage yesterday, said he was knocked unconscious by the Taser ? and then, he said, beaten by officers. "When I woke up 10 policemen were hitting me and punching me in the face."

Sepp Blatter, the president of world soccer body FIFA, said Toronto Mayor David Miller told him police were "rough" in their treatment of the Chilean players. But Miller later denied making the comment.

Blatter called the incident a "black mark" on the otherwise successful tournament, which has set an all-time record for Under-20 attendance.

"We have given the responsibility ... to the Canadian Soccer Association to deal with this matter with the relevant authorities and then to report in detail to FIFA," he said.

El Mercurio, echoing other Chilean papers, said Toronto police acted with "brutal aggression." The headline on the front page of La Cuarta, a tabloid, read "they looked for glory and found hell."The game against Argentina, a 3-0 Chile loss, was ill-tempered throughout. German referee Wolfgang Stark ejected two Chilean players and issued the team seven yellow cards.b>

After the final whistle, several Chilean players tried to approach Stark, but others kept them away. While Chilean fans yelled at the officials, police officers intervened to escort them from the field.

Some of the players had already boarded the team bus when the clash began.

After it started, said Canadian Press photographer Nathan Denette, "the bus just unloads and there's eight, 10 players come off the bus and there's just fists flying everywhere, between the cops, the security guards, a couple of ladies were involved that were security."

Players were seen throwing items from bus windows.

Chilean stars Matias Vidangossy, Alexis Sanchez and Arturo Vidal were among those detained at the stadium and released.

Team doctor Luis Salazar told Chile's Radio Cooperativa that injuries sustained in the clash could prevent some players from playing in tomorrow's third-place game against Austria.

Harold Mayne-Nicholls, head of the Chilean soccer team delegation, says the game had nothing to do with what happened outside the team bus.

"We apologize for the behaviour of our players after the game," he said. "(But) we cannot accept these kinds of things coming from the police. We will see what action we will take."

http://www.thestar.com/DesiLife/News/article/238415

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/575573-fifa20-melee-a-global-dust-up/
Share on other sites

Probe shows cops did nothing wrong in Chilean soccer scuffle

Canadian Press

July 30, 2007 at 3:51 PM EDT

TORONTO ? Toronto's police chief says an investigation into his force's scuffle with the Chilean under-20 soccer team reveals his officers did nothing wrong.

Bill Blair says the officers conducted themselves appropriately under "trying circumstances" during the July 19 incident, which drew condemnation from soccer fans and politicians alike in Chile.

Blair says Chilean players punched and spat at officers and tore arm and foot rests from the team bus to hurl at police. Four officers received minor injuries during the melee.

Blair says the Chilean consul general has been apprised of the findings.

The incident erupted as members of the Chilean under-20 World Cup team were getting onto their bus following their 3-0 semifinal loss to Argentina at the National Soccer Stadium in Toronto.

Police said they had to intervene when a dispute broke out between a Chilean player and a rival fan. The players say they were needlessly roughed up and clubbed by officers.

Members of the entire Chilean team, many of whom were bloodied and screaming following the brawl, were later detained by police at the stadium.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has called the situation serious and the country's foreign minister said he would send a complaint to his Canadian counterpart, Peter MacKay.

http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...ortsSoccer/home

This article didn't mention it but another earlier today said that one Chilean team member said that a player punched a female officer in the face.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • LAV Filters 0.80.0 by Razvan Serea LAVFSplitter is a multi-format media splitter that uses libavformat (the demuxing library from ffmpeg) to demux all sorts of media files. LAV Splitter is a Souce Filter/Splitter required to demux the files into their separate elementary streams. LAV Audio and Video Decoder are powerful decoders with a focus on quality and performance, without any compromises. Supported Formats: MKV/WebM, AVI, MP4/MOV, MPEG-TS/PS (including basic EVO support), FLV, OGG, and many more that are supported by ffmpeg! LAV Filters are based on ffmpeg and libbluray and is aimed to offer a all-around solution to perfect playback of file-based Media as well as Blu-rays. LAV Filters 0.80.0 changelog: LAV Splitter NEW: Introduced the IURLSourceFilterLAV interface to allow opening URLs with custom user agent and referrer NEW: Added support for WebP images Changed: Increased the length of the advanced subtitle selection field, so its no longer cut off after 255 characters Changed: Improved buffering behavior on badly interleaved video files Fixed: Audio streams with an unknown/unsupported codec are no longer selected for playback, as long as others are present Fixed: Improved accuracy of reported FPS from AviSynth scripts LAV Video NEW: D3D11 support for HEVC 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 hardware decoding NEW: Dolby Vision extension metadata is exported for renderers to use Changed: Added additional media types to support more video streams Changed: Updated dav1d for significant AV1 decoding improvements Fixed: Improved handling of H.264 4:4:4 files encoded by certain versions of x264 Fixed: VP9 DXVA2/D3D11 decoding could result in artifacts on some clips Fixed: Decoding ProRes reports more accurate color details LAV Audio Changed: Added support for additional ADPCM audio codecs Download: LAV Filters 0.80.0 | 15.5 MB (Open Source) View: LAV Filters Website | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Haven't really used it much for years, not specific to Windows 11.. it's there but I mostly ignore it. I do install StartAllBack though bust mostly for the other bits that it brings. I prefer the "alt-space" type launchers (KRunner in Plasma, Flow in Windows or the like), a lot less clutter and more smarts like bookmark/history searches and other useful plugins.
    • Calibre 8.5 by Razvan Serea  Calibre is an open source e-book library management application that enables you to manage your e-book collection, convert e-books between different formats, synchronize with popular e-book reader devices, and read your e-books with the included viewer. It acts as an e-library and also allows for format conversion, news feeds to e-book conversion, as well as e-book reader sync features and an integrated e-book viewer. Calibre's features include: library management; format conversion (all major ebook formats); syncing to e-book reader devices; fetching news from the Web and converting it into ebook form; viewing many different e-book formats, giving you access to your book collection over the internet using just a browser. Calibre 8.5 changelog: New features The scrollbars used in calibre in light mode are now the same style as the ones in dark mode, this improves the contrast making the scrollbar more accessible Kobo driver: add an option to change the how the Kobo displays series numbers using a template. Manage data files dialog: Add a button to cancel remaining books when managing multiple books Kobo driver: add support for new Tolino firmware Bug fixes Prevent Windows 11 from starting a conhost.exe process for every calibre worker process E-book viewer: Improve highlight grouping with recurring chapter names When sending emails to amazon and pocketbook use random English text instead of UUIDs for subject/body. Improved news sources NYTimes WSJ Financial Times Eenadu Fokus.se Business standard Go comics NZ Herald TLS Magazine Download: Calibre 8.5 | Portable | ~200.0 MB (Open Source) Download: Calibre for MacOS | 316.0 MB Download: Calibre for Linux View: Calibre Home Page | Calibre Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Or, it is Apple simply overinflated the screens.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Crunchy6 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      KynanSEIT earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      gowtham07 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Collaborator
      lethalman went up a rank
      Collaborator
    • Week One Done
      Wayne Robinson earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      679
    2. 2
      ATLien_0
      277
    3. 3
      Michael Scrip
      221
    4. 4
      +FloatingFatMan
      169
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      162
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!