When politics disrupts play
Afp, Lisbon
EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso's visit to the Portuguese national team on the eve of its first World Cup match against Angola disrupted the squad's preparations for the game, the spokesman for the Portuguese football federation charges in a new book.Afonso de Melo called the June 10 visit to the team's base during the tournament in Germany "ill-timed" in his recollections of Portugal's World Cup campaign which hit Portuguese bookstores on Thursday. "It forced alterations to the security system and the schedule of the team. Especially since his handlers demanded that a huge number of reporters be present," he wrote according to excerpts published in daily newspaper 24Horas. "For all of them, the inconvenience caused mattered little. The entire team stayed at the hotel, obliged to carry out the sacrifice of the kissing of the royal hand," he added. Barroso, a former Portuguese Prime Minister and avid football fan, was in the stands during Portugal's 1-0 defeat over Angola in Cologne, Germany. Portugal went on to lose to hosts Germany in the third-place World Cup play-off, their second-best performance in the history of the tournament.
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