A young Croatian football fan in Austria for the European Championship died Thursday of an apparent heart attack just hours before his team defeated Germany 2-1. Police did not identify the victim in keeping with Austrian practice but said he appeared to be about 20 years old. He collapsed in a fan zone here, the venue for the Germany-Croatia match. The Austria Press Agency said that a police officer trained in first-aid techniques revived the victim at the scene but he died later in the hospital, shortly before the opening whistle. Scalpers welcome Dutch The Netherlands' match at the European Championship on Friday was welcome news to the team's awesome army of traveling fans and a small group of ticket scalpers following the tournament in Switzerland and Austria. The fervent, orange-clad Dutch fans have been marked out by ticket resellers as the big spenders at Euro 2008, where supply was never going to meet demand because six of the eight stadiums hold just 30,000 spectators, making ideal conditions to inflate the black market. Only the Poles and Germans, the scalpers say, have matched the Oranje fans' willingness to pay much more than face value for a ticket. At the other end of the scale, French buyers in Zurich and ticket-less Italians in Bern were thin on the ground, according to dealers who had moved on to work at Geneva train station Wednesday. They've arrived from places like London, Washington and Vancouver, and they're not totally happy with what they've found.
