The Crime? Marketing. The result? Bruises and a foreign relations issue

Perhaps you saw my earlier post in which FIFA ejected 36 women from the World Cup stands and detained them for three hours for questioning - because of a suspicion that they were marketing Bavaria Beer at an event sponsored by competitor Budweiser.

The marketing tactic? Orange miniskirts.

Well, DutchNews.nl has an update. First, it turns out that FIFA's suspicions were correct.

[T]he appearance of the girls turned out...to be a publicity stunt by the brewing group, news website nu.nl reports.

Second, there are allegations of mistreatment during police custody:

'We were very harshly dealt with by Fifa officials,' spokeswoman for the girls Barbara Catelein said. 'Some of the girls are covered with bruises. This is not an innocent campaign any more.'

Third, the Netherlands Foreign Ministry is now involved (even though only 3 of the 36 women were Dutch):

The foreign ministry has asked the South African authorities to explain why 36 girls wearing orange dresses were forcibly removed from the stadium after yesterday's World Cup match between the Netherlands and Denmark in Johannesburg, Nos tv reports.

Now, if I want to adhere to strict journalistic standards, it is imperative that I direct my readers to pictures of the miniskirts themselves - for journalistic reasons, of course. And I found such pictures on a Dutch website. This page, which is in Dutch, also contains a link to a Dutch blog post which also includes pictures of the babes. The title of the blog post is in Dutch; could someone tell me what the Dutch phrase "Fuk FIFA" means in English?

But wait...there's more (in the Queen's English):

An orange mini-dress costing under 10 euros was today at the centre of the storm over ITV football pundit Robbie Earle's sacking.

'The Dutchy dress' was worn by the 36 women ejected from yesterday's Holland v Denmark match....

Members of the widely photographed group were found to still have tickets in their possession and it is understood they were part of Earle's allocation.


Well, let's hope that Earle got some...beer for those tickets.