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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Day 19 of the WSC advent calendar and we’re concentrating on the true meaning of Christmas: turkey. In issue 191, from January 2003, Barney Ronay reported on football’s role as an arena for politics in Turkey, and how it could change after the election of a new nationalist and Islamic-leaning government.

In 1985 England beat Turkey 5-0 at Wembley in a World Cup qualifier. Two years later, an opportunity for revenge presented itself when the teams met again. This time the score was 8-0. Yet when Sven-Goran Erik­sson’s men travel to Istanbul next October for their final Euro 2004 qualifier, they will face the team that fin­ished third at this summer’s World Cup. Turkish foot­ball has transformed itself over the past ten years. And now Turkey looks set to follow suit.

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When Hungary visited in 1981, England hadn't got to the World Cup finals for 11 years. Cris Freddi went with his heart in his mouth, which improved his singing

Call this our culmination. England’s last qualifying match. We’d been to all the others at home and reck­oned we’d suffered enough. They hadn’t been convincing in any of the others, even the 4-0 opener against Norway. It took them most of the first half to score, the third goal was a penalty, and the fourth was three min­utes from time. I’d missed that one, Mar­iner’s only good goal for England, because I was swapping nips of rum with two Norwegian fans. There was also the most beautiful woman ever seen at Wem­bley, a classic white-haired ice goddess. Drifting involuntarily towards her in the coach park, I found myself shaking hands with her equally stunning boy­friend, straight out of the Thor comics. Oh well, who needs the perfect woman when you’ve got two World Cup points?

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Ian Plenderleith goes looking for the best in English-language coverage of European football on the web and shares the anguish of the Portuguese public over the latest career move for Phil Collins

Although most of the major web­sites now pay lip service to the burgeoning interest in European football with scores from, and columnists in, a variety of foreign countries, there are a number of English-language on­line locations that devote themselves to one country alone. Two of the best cover the Iber­ian peninsula.

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The FA of Ireland have been castigated in a report sparked by the World Cup fiasco. Brian de Salvo hopes they take it more seriously than the last one

“The FAI is experiencing a confused present and faces an uncertain future.” That’s not a quotation from Genesis, the sports management consultancy ap­pointed to report on the organisation of Ire- land’s governing body after their World Cup campaign, who produced a damning indictment of the FAI. It’s the verdict of a previous report, pre­sented as long ago as 1996, which highlighted “a lack of vision, direction and planning… indecisive structures and… reluctance to consider necessary change.” Little has changed since. Will it now?

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