~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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World cup makes atmosphere hotter in Vietnam

HANOI - The football atmosphere is becoming hotter in Vietnam as the World Cup recently kicked-off in Asia for the first time. In beer pubs and coffee shops, at homes, fanatics of varying degrees have been going berserk (over the spills and thrills of the games). Vietnamese people are really crazy football fans. The first thing people talk every day is about football matches during the month the World Cup happens. The interesting matches over the last 13 days has had million of Vietnamese glued to football matches on television.

In order to serve football fans, more television sets were installed at public gathering places. At Hanoi Train Station and Giang Vo International Exhibition Center, people can even watch football matches on 300-inch screen in air-conditioned comfort. Now, in streets, posters advertising music and comedy programmes were replaced by posters advertising sale promotion campaigns on the occasion of the World Cup. Electronic shop owners in Hanoi's Hai Ba Trung street said last month's revenue was up five-fold due to television sales. Vietnamese passion for football has a proven ability to cause the nation to grind to a halt. There is no precise figure on how many people in offices and factories have substituted work to watch the month-long contest or its cost to productivity and national economy.

However, a recent survey said more than 80 percent of employees would this month choose football over work. "I have a whole life to make money but it will be the first and only time in my life that I can enjoy World Cup in daylight played in nearby countries, " said Vietnam's Industrial and Commercial Bank official Nguyen Trung Kien. A branch of a computer company in Hanoi has also allowed its employees to watch the matches on the condition they make up later. As the head of the branch pointed out, they could easily have left office under the variuos pretexts to catch the matches elsewhere. Hanoi's Vietnam Tourism branch director Luu Nhan Vinh said :" We always keep the company's benefit in our head. However, for this Worl Cup, my employees and l could not resist the seduction of the ball."

Others, not quite so lucky, have seen it fit to smuggle small TV sets into the office in spite of knowing they would be found out. They remained unfazed, however, by the threat of punishment for, as a financial offical said, "nothing could stop the passion for football." The majority of the country's workforce face a tougher choice and potential financial penalties for work absences. Company directors are forced to become referees blowing the whistle on missing employees while mindful of a firm's net profits.

And it is not just the men this time who have caught the fever but the women too. The enthusiasm and knowledge of many ladies has come as a huge surprise. Remote areas in the country have also not escaped the epidemic. Lo Van Inh lives in the country's mountainous province of Son La. He sold corn to buy a TV set to watch the matches, though his commune has not even been connected to the national power grid. People can still watch, he said, because of the mini hydro- electricity plant set up from public collections.

It is easily to see that the football atmospher is overwhelming everywhere in Vietnam from big cities to countrysides, from cafe, beer pubs to offices, and factories.

By Huang Haimin & Thai Thanh Van - Xinhuanet, June 12, 2002