'Korean punishment should warn others' - Franz Beckenbauer

Franz Beckenbauer has warned that countries need to learn a lesson from North Korea's recent plight.

Next month's World Cup qualifier between North Korea and Japan was switched to Bangkok by FIFA after crowd trouble during March qualifiers against Bahrain and Iran in Pyongyang.

"Countries need to take more care of security, they need to be better organised," the head of Germany's 2006 World Cup organising committee told Reuters.

"The most important thing is the security for the players, for the coaches and also for the people."

The decision to hold the June 8 match with Japan in a third country and behind closed doors came as a shock to the secretive communist state and dismayed many neutral observers.

Beckenbauer said: "I feel sorry for North Korea because they made a lot of effort to come back to the international (arena) and now they have a penalty which means they have to play their qualification game out of the country."

Germany are hosting the eight-nation Confederations Cup next month and Beckenbauer believes the tournament will give the rest of the world a glimpse of what to expect during next year's soccer extravaganza.

"The Confederations Cup will be the first test for five venues and cities which are organising this mini-World Cup," he said during a visit to the World Team Cup tennis event in Duesseldorf.

"We are very well prepared (for next year) and so far we don't have any problems and I hope we won't face any problems. I'm very optimistic."

The World Cup will be held in 2006 from June 9 to July 9.