Saturday 1 England draw Argentina, Sweden and Nigeria in their World Cup group, with France the likely opponents should they reach the second round. Ireland get Germany, Cameroon and Saudi Arabia. Sven offers a thin smile: “I hope we have more luck in the matches than we had in the draw.” “I must have run over a lot of black cats,” sighs Colin Todd as Fabby misses a penalty for the second successive week, allowing leaders Liverpool to sneak a win at Derby through a Michael Owen goal. Sir Alex pretends to throw in the towel again – “I don’t think we can win the title now” – after Man Utd’s 3-0 home defeat by Chelsea leaves them eight points off the top. Alan Shearer’s contentious dismissal during Newcastle’s 1-1 draw at Charlton has his manager hopping mad: “It’s an insult to a player who has graced the game.” Burnley return to the top of the First Division, beating Palace 2-1. Brighton lead the Second by three points, Plymouth hold a four-point lead in the Third, where Bristol Rovers are now just two points off the bottom after defeat at Rushden. Luton face a possible three-point deduction after calling off their trip to Kidderminster due to a flu outbreak. League investigators will visit the club with a coughometer.
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Stories
Even with Ronaldo in one of his funny moods, Brazil rarely needed to break sweat to retain their South American title in Paraguay as Sam Wallace reports
At either end of the Defensores Del Chacos ground in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, stood enormous models of Budweiser cans which, at set intervals, would start to gyrate. Occasionally, a plastic bag thrown from the crowd behind the goal would sail over the cans, jettisoning in flight its cargo of urine. The irony was hard to ignore. No amount of expensive advertising ever quite managed to sanitise a gloriously chaotic Copa America 1999.
If England managers have a hard time, they still get off lightly compared to their counterparts in Colombia, as Richard Sanders reports
As the new manager of Colombia, 40-year-old Javier Alvarez, steps gingerly into the post, he could be forgiven a little trepidation, and perhaps the odd glance over his shoulder. His two predecessors received repeated death threats and one saw his centre-half murdered by disgruntled gamblers.
Harry Pearson charts the reversal of fortunes for Hamilton Ricard
The second and third things Middlesbrough fans least expected to see this season were resident Scandinavian fop Mikkel Beck winning a 50/50 challenge and Hamilton Ricard heading towards Christmas as one of the Premiership’s top marksmen. The barrel-chested Colombian arrived at the Riverside from Deportivo Cali in a £2 million deal during the second-half of last season after an apparently bitter tug of love between Boro and Sheffield United over his affections.