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| June 4, 2002 | Tuesday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 22,1423 |
Chinese in hotel spat with FIFA
KWANGJU (South Korea), June 3: Angry Chinese soccer officials complained to FIFA on Monday after organisers put journalists in the hotel where the media-wary team are staying for their first ever game at the World Cup finals.
The team first asked FIFA to move the journalists, all from Reuters, out of the Shin Yang Park Hotel in the South Korean city of Kwangju, then asked to move to another hotel themselves.
With no other beds available, the dispute took three hours to resolve with an agreement that the journalists could stay as long as they were not on the same floors as players. Some of the Reuters staff had to swap rooms with other guests.
“This is their first World Cup. You have to be smooth with them,” a FIFA security officer, Hisham Azmy, said after rushing to the hotel to sort out the problem with Chinese football association officials.
FIFA rules state that media from a given country cannot stay in the same hotel as their national team. The Chinese insisted they had a deal with FIFA to ban all journalists and fans from staying at their World Cup hotels.
The China squad flew into Kwangju from their base on the South Korean island of Cheju amid heavy security for a one-night stay ahead of Tuesday’s group C match against Costa Rica.
Black-uniformed members of South Korea’s crack SWAT police squad armed with submachine guns lined the exit from the airport, with security noticeably heavier than for the arrival of other teams that have played in Kwangju.
Veteran defender Fan Zhiyi complained at the weekend that some journalists were hounding the players. He said one reporter had slipped past tight security at the team’s base hotel on Cheju island and pestered him for a photograph.
Four of the 10 South Korean World Cup venues have too few beds to ensure that players and journalists do not stay at the same hotel, organisers said. Kwangju is one of them.
“The Chinese understood that in this case they have to make an exception as long as the journalists are not on the same floor,” said Juan Ignacio Rossi of FIFA’s accommodation bureau.—Reuters
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