Looks Like Team Spirit

FASHION Spring is in the air, which can only mean one thing: football. The goals, the glory, the hooligans — and some of the worst clothes of the year. And that’s just the fans. While the Manchester United players wear Armani off the pitch, their devotees will be decked head to toe in the shiny, the baggy and the generally naff. It’s one thing for the men to dress in tatty track suits, but as football becomes more hip with women the idea of donning all that nylon is, well, enough to make Ulrika Jonsson stay home. Now a London-based designer has come up with kit as iconoclastic as David Beckham’s hair band. Katie Walker studied fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and worked with Marc Jacobs, but it was her sister’s boyfriend who provided her with her first great fashion idea. When he started complaining about his girlfriend wearing boys’ tat from the team shops, Walker came up with stylish team togs. She made her sister a white A-line skirt embroidered with the words “I LOVE Arsenal” across the bottom, then approached Chelsea and Arsenal and got permission to design a 50-piece collection that includes $260 vests adorned with Swarovski crystals, $165 velour culottes and $1,125 cashmere jumpers. Cashmere in the club stands? “It’s not primarily designed for the terraces,” Walker says. “It’s for dressing up during the day or on the beach or for parties at night.” She aims to sell to designer boutiques. And so far, the togs are proving a hit with the in-crowd. Walker made an Arsenal dress for a friend to wear to the Independent Spirit Awards, an alternative film competition in Los Angeles, and hip fashion magazine the Face will feature her work in an upcoming issue. Meanwhile, Walker is working on convincing other teams to lend her their names. Spring looks better already. — By Lauren Goldstein

Major PlayerSOCCER Watch Cédric Fauré. Three years ago this Toulouse resident was working for a consumer electronics company, and limiting his footballing to one weekly match with an amateur team. Now employed by the once-moribund Toulouse Football Club (TFC), the 24-year-old striker’s 20 goals so far this season top France’s second pro division, moving TFC to the cusp of a return to League One. Bringing Fauré’s pyrotechnics to bigger audiences next season is risky for the resurrected TFC. Teams from marquee leagues in England, Spain and Italy are already looking to entice Fauré to join France’s foreign legion of footballers abroad. — By Bruce Crumley

Sick Note

DISEASE The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has so far caused 276 deaths, and fear of the disease has forced the cancellation of major sporting events. The ARAFURA games due to be held May 17-24 in Darwin, Australia, are now off, as is the May 17 running of the €1.5 million Singapore cup. The first sumo tournament to be held in South Korea, on June 14-15, is postponed, but the world table tennis championships in Paris from May 19-25 are still on.

Williams Kicks Butts

FORMULA 1 For too long formula one has been in thrall to the dreaded weed. Now BMW-Williams has shown how to kick the habit — by signing up GlaxoSmithKline, makers of nicotine patches NiQuitin CQ, as a major sponsor. The pharmaceutical company is putting an estimated €13 million into the team in exchange for having the NiQuitin CQ brand prominently displayed on the cars and drivers’ uniforms. Though Williams gave up its association with cigarette companies three years ago, Formula One still attracts €325 million a year from cigarette manufac-turers — half the teams on the grid still retain significant tobacco backing. But everyone must go cold turkey by 2005, when a European Union ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship takes effect. Antismoking campaigners are thrilled that the world’s most widely seen motor sport — every Grand Prix weekend attracts an estimated 350 million viewers — is wresting itself from the clutches of big tobacco. Paul Nurse, joint director general of Cancer Research U.K., hymned, “Formula One is glamorous but this is an opportunity to dispel the myth that, by association, smoking is glamorous too.” Tobacco firms are resigned; after nearly 40 years in the sport, they’re not crying into their ashtrays.