For Dutch football fans it has become the summer's cult outfit. Over the past
few months, a quarter of a million Holland supporters have bought themselves a
pair of patriotic orange lederhosen - wearing them whenever Holland take to the
pitch in the World Cup.
But when Holland fans turned up on Friday to watch their team play the Ivory
Coast, wearing the garish trousers, officials from Fifa were not amused.
The lederhosen carry the name of a Dutch beer, Bavaria.
The only problem is that the Dutch brewery which makes Bavaria is not an
official World Cup sponsor. And so, in one of the most surreal incidents of the
World Cup so far, stadium officials in Stuttgart made the supporters take their
trousers off - leaving many of them to watch Holland's 2-1 victory in their
underpants.
"They put our trousers in the bin," said an aggrieved Peer Swinkels, the
chairman of Bavaria, Holland's second biggest brewery.
"Fans going into the stadium had to dump them in a big container. Fifa said
that the supporters could get them back afterwards. But the container was full
of rubbish so most people didn't bother. I understand that Fifa wants to protect
its sponsors. But this is very strange."
Critics say the decision to make more than 1,000 Dutch fans strip off last
Friday is evidence of the extraordinary lengths to which Fifa has gone to
protect the interests of World Cup sponsors - at the expense of ordinary fans.
Fifa, however, says it has done nothing wrong and is entitled to defend
itself against what it calls "ambush marketing".
Either way, there is little doubt of the seemingly unlimited power that
sponsors now wield over global sporting events - with British politicians
controversially voting to give sponsors a major role in the 2012 London
Olympics.
Fifa said its six suppliers and 15 official partners - among them Yahoo,
McDonald's and the American brewery that makes Budweiser - had spent 700m euros
(480m pounds)on the tournament. Without their money, it would be impossible to
stage the competition, it said.
But the zeal with which Fifa guards its commercial interests has gone down
badly with fans - as has its decision to offer 14% of all match tickets to
sponsors. Only 8% have gone to national football associations.
"It's ridiculous," said Sjoerd Schreurs, a Dutch supporter who had to take
his trousers off. "I queued for 25 minutes to get in. When I reached the front,
an official told me: 'You're not getting in like that'. I took my trousers off.
I managed to chuck them over the fence to some friends. But another official
spotted them and took them away.'
"I watched the game in my pants," Mr Schreurs, 33, added. "Fortunately I had
quite a long T-shirt."
Mr Swinkels dreamed up the idea of orange Leeuwenhose, or lion trousers, last
year. Dutch fans who purchased 12 cans of Bavaria beer could buy the trousers
for just £¿.95 (they come with the tail of a lion, Holland's national symbol,
and two extra large pockets for storing beer cans).
