Search: ' Didier Deschamps'

Marseille were first crowned League champions, then European Champions. They were stripped of the former though, reports Aaron Donaghy

The long-term significance
The best-supported and richest club in French football, Olympique de Marseille, beat AC Milan to win the first-ever Champions League on May 26, 1993. Twenty-four hours later, news broke that Marseille’s vital league match against Valenciennes just six days earlier had been fixed. It emerged that three Valenciennes players had been paid to “go easy” on Marseille, who were chasing a record fifth consecutive league title. Valenciennes defender Jacques Glassmann claimed that he and two of his colleagues were offered £30,000 to throw the match. Marseille were thus barred from the 1993‑94 Champions League by UEFA and stripped of their league title by the French FA, while three players and a Marseille director were banned from football. A year later they were further punished with enforced relegation, bankruptcy and the imprisonment of club president and millionaire entrepreneur Bernard Tapie. The whistle-blower Glassmann claimed to have been shunned by French clubs subsequently and wound down his career playing on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion.

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Dear WSC
York City’s announcement, after a new sponsorship deal with Nestle Rowntree, that their stadium will be known as KitKat Crescent for two years makes it clear who now runs the game. Yes, it’s the journalists. For years this gallant profession have struggled to build any workable puns around us. At Sunderland, say, sub- editors could claim that The Team Shone Brightly At the Stadium of Light or The Black Cats Needed All Their Luck To­night. But York play at Bootham Crescent and are nicknamed The Minster Men and there’s nothing much you can do with either of those. But all is different now, thankfully. Now when we are getting stuffed at home to someone like Gravesend, await the deluge of remarks that York Took A Break At The KitKat…
Andrew Traynor, York

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As Raymond Domenech steps up from the Under-21s, some believe the national team just don't pay enough to lure the country's top coaches, writes Ben Lyttleton

In a rare moment of candour, France’s football federation president Claude Simonet recently admitted that, in an ideal world, Arsène Wenger would have replaced Jacques Santini as France’s national coach. “He would be the perfect choice but he is light years away from the job,” Simonet said. “There’s no way we could get him, not only because of his club but also because of his salary.” Santini was paid a basic annual salary of £300,000 and Raymond Domenech, the new coach who was promoted from his post as Under-21 boss on the sixth anniversary of France winning the 1998 World Cup, will earn the same. “For me it’s not a question of money,” said Domenech. “I work for the federation and have done for the past 11 years. They’re just offering me a different post.”

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He might have been the answer to one of Liverpool's perennial problems, but the call never came. Ben Lyttleton goes in search of Anfield's wasted winger

The reception area at Nîmes stadium was heaving before France’s 1998 World Cup winners took on Marseille in a charity match in aid of flood victims in early November. The France coach Aimé Jacquet was getting stressed out at the late arrival of Christophe Dugarry, muttering: “It’s worse than at the World Cup, because with Stéphane [Guivarc’h] injured, we haven’t even got one forward.” Didier Deschamps was trying to get Marcel Desailly to speed through the traffic by promising the game would earn him a senior cap, while Frank Leboeuf was causing hilarity with his Scot­tish hunting get-up. And then the Liverpool winger Bernard Diomède walked in. He went to register his arrival with the receptionist, who was heard saying: “You’re a player? And where do you say you play? At Liver-what?”

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Sacked Chelsea coach Gianluca Vialli will most likely continue his managerial career in England, not Italy, reports Filippo Ricci

What does the future hold for Gianluca Vialli after his sacking by Chelsea? He didn’t need an official coaching licence to work in Eng­land, though it will be mandatory in the future, but it is already compulsory in Italy and Vialli doesn’t yet have one.

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