February 02, 2000 02:02pm
Panel Makes Soccer-Sex Ruling
Source: AP
(JERUSALEM) -- Four Israeli soccer players who had sex with prostitutes or girlfriends before a loss to Denmark last year should be banned from the national team, a committee of inquiry recommended Wednesday.
The committee was appointed by the Israel Football Association after a newspaper reported that several players entertained prostitutes at their hotel the night before a 5-0 loss in a European Championship qualifier on Nov. 4.
``The players who were with call girls are not fit to wear the national colors again,'' the committee said in its interim report.
The committee, which hired two private investigating firms to question players and witnesses, said the meetings with prostitutes did not take place the night before the game, as the daily Maariv had reported. It also said some of the women who slept with the players were girlfriends, not prostitutes.
However a committee spokesman, Yariv Ben-Eliezer, said the committee thinks those who slept with girlfriends should also be banned from the national team.
The committee defined the girlfriends as ``respectable girls who were not members of the player's families'' - meaning neither prostitutes nor the players' wives.
The committee rejected allegations of drug use but said two players drank small amounts of alcohol from minibars in their hotel rooms. The committee recommended disciplinary measures against those players but did not elaborate.
The report did not give the names of any of the players alleged to have committed any offense. The Football Association has not yet announced whether it will adopt the recommendations.
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