POLAND JOINS ANTI-RACISM CAMPAIGN

Polands's World Cup squad has pledged its support to a campaign aimed at stamping out racism at football stadiums, the campaign's organiser said. Donning shirts inscribed with the campaign's slogan, ‘Let's kick racism out of stadiums’, the players posed for photographs to be used on posters handed to fans in Germany, where it begins its World Cup campaign next week. ‘We want to use this campaign to protest against the exploitation of the World Cup for propagating racism and violence,’ Marcin Kornak, president of the Polish anti-racism group Nigdy Wiecej (Never Again), said. ‘It's high time that people stop associating football with aggression and Neo-nazi groups.’

Drawn in the first-round Group A with host nation Germany, Costa Rica and Ecuador, Poland will play its first match World Cup match on June 9 against Ecuador in Gelsenkirchen.