West Germany Athletics

Finally, someone held a football clinic for Werner, Klaus and Uwe. Boy, did they need one. It seems clear now that one reason American football isn't catching on here is because Germans can't catch. They're all Schnitzel fingers. Several Ram coaches and players tried their level best to change that in one afternoon session on the fields of Maifeld, lending their skills to dozens of wide-eyed amateurs from the club leagues of Berlin. It didn't work.

It was a moonlight dinner cruise Wednesday night on the Havel River for Georgia Frontiere and friends. The owner of the Los Angeles Rams, visiting Germany's largest city for Saturday's exhibition game between the Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs, tossed a three-hour bash aboard the Havel Queen paddleboat to celebrate what she hoped would be the Rams' third American Bowl win. "Although," Frontiere admitted, "I don't predict; I just pray."

For 60 years there has been a World Cup, and for centuries there has been soccer in some form played by millions of adults and children from Africa to Antarctica to Asia. By now, wouldn't you think somebody would have figured out how these damned matches should end?

West Germany and Italy scored victories at the European Soccer Championships Tuesday, a day marked by rioting in two West German cities by British fans. In Dusseldorf, several hundred fans awaiting tonight's game between England and the Netherlands rioted for the second consecutive night. Police arrested 18 and reported considerable damage near the main train station. In Cologne, police announced 22 arrests late Monday and early Tuesday.

Now that the host team is no longer a World Cup championship contender, which became glaringly evident even to non-soccer fans when the tricolor flags came down from apartment balconies throughout the country, Italians seem to have turned their attention from Maradona to Madonna. With the U.S. rock star appearing in concerts next week in Rome and Turin, her picture has replaced that of Italy's goal-scoring phenomenon, Salvatore Schillaci, on the front pages of newspapers.

Was ist American football? Good question, that. It is asked often in this city. In hotel lobbies. On sidewalks. At shopping centers. If you have walked the streets of West Berlin, you have seen the faces of Jim Everett and Christian Okoye on the American Bowl '90 handbills, each of them begging the query of the hour . . . Was ist American football?

The U.S. Soccer Federation announced Thursday that former West German coach Franz Beckenbauer has agreed in principle to serve as a consultant to the federation through 1992. The agreement came after meetings between Beckenbauer and USSF President Alan Rothenberg this week in West Germany. "This would include helping set up our national team program and making a number of visits to the United States," Rothenberg said. "Thereafter, he will have a substantially more full-time role with the USSF."

The referee selected to work the World Cup quarterfinal match between West Germany and Czechoslovakia was Helmut Kohl. But one should forgive the Czechs if they could not immediately find the humor in that after Sunday's 1-0 loss. Kohl, a 47-year-old Austrian who is not related to the West German chancellor of the same name, awarded a penalty kick in the 24th minute that resulted in the only goal.