face on it. Sir Bert Millichip, the FA’s former Chairman who now sat on the all-important FIFA committee, was banging the drum for England. Hoddle appeared unfazed, even suggesting that if England were not seeded it might be an advantage to be in the same group as Brazil – which was tempting fate, especially if that group was also to include countries such as Nigeria and Croatia. In the end it was a choice between Holland, Romania and England for the two last seeded places.
Holland and Romania got the nod. ‘A shade disappointed’ was Hoddle’s immediate response, before taking solace in the traditional chirpy get-out that ‘Come what may you have to go out there and beat whoever you come up against.’ Manager and captain stood shoulder to shoulder. Shearer, who dropped into Marseille for twenty-four hours shortly before the draw to sign the world’s second biggest boot deal – £15 million with Umbro until the year 2000 – played Hoddle’s parrot. ‘You have to meet the best in the end anyway, so it doesn’t really matter which group you are in,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Graham Taylor, now back where he belonged as manager of Watford, emerged from his vegetable patch to defend himself. ‘I’m used to getting blamed for many things, but it is not my fault this time. If people think England have been left out of the seeding because of what happened in 1994 they should look at the rules. It’s not just about non-qualification in 94. You have to take friendly games since then into account, because every international match counts.’
For the French, the Tirage au Sort de la Compétition Finale – The Final Draw – was a chance to road-test their organisational machinery. The media centre at the Stade Vélodrome was big, but not nearly big enough to accommodate the 1,200 visiting journalists. There were smiling girls with badges pinned to their chests, and goodie bags stuffed with watches, calculators, pens and key-rings – stocking-fillers galore. There was red carpet everywhere. The woolly baseball cap with flaps to cover the ears came in handy during the exhibition match between Europe and the Rest of the World before the draw, when the temperature at the top of the arched main stand plummeted. Europe scored within the first minute to begin a goal-fest. Gabriel Batistuta scored a couple, as did Ronaldo, who looked awesome. The 38,000-odd crowd seemed to enjoy it, but they could have done without the French cheer-leader who only highlighted the lack of competitive edge by urging spectators to join him in an inane chant for one side or the other.
It felt more like the opening ceremony than the draw, with a big blue stage at one end where glass pots into which the names of the competing countries would be poured were installed in front of an oversized football. Thousands of schoolchildren sporting different coloured T-shirts filled one stand, VIPs and the media in the other, and the rest sat behind the goal opposite the stage. There was a reproduction of an ancient mosaic in one corner, with XAIPEO in Greek lettering written on it. Greetings.
More than 1,500 people from the worlds of football, politics and show business were invited. Many of them had been in Marseille most of the week, being wined and dined by the sponsors who make sure FIFA’s cup is always full to overflowing. During the second half I wandered through the sponsor’s village just outside the stadium and was handed a Snickers bar and a Coke. And then another Snickers bar and another Coke. A man at the Adidas stand with an American accent was longing to talk to someone. He told me that most of the matches would be broadcast to more than 120 countries and that some games would be seen by 500 million people worldwide. I told him that only that week I had read somewhere that Nike was willing to spend £20 million – almost exactly what Adidas was paying to be an official sponsor – in an attempt to steal the limelight from their rivals. ‘That’s none of my business,’ he said. ‘What I know is that this is going to be far bigger than any Olympics, and with the extra teams in the final this will be the biggest sporting event the world has ever known. No one really knows exactly what it’s costing us but I know it’s worth it. Do you want a sticker?’
At the end of the match, there was a pitch invasion. Sepp Blatter would not have been pleased, since only twenty-four hours earlier he had called for all perimeter fences to be taken down by June because, he said, ‘prisoners and wild animals should be behind bars, not football supporters.’
It took the stewards more than fifteen minutes to clear the pitch. One boy came on with his football and dribbled the length of the field until he got to the penalty spot in front of the empty goal. This was his moment. He missed, shooting high and wide into the stand, and no one would give his ball back. Others performed cartwheels and danced around in the centre circle until the stewards were told to show some muscle. France’s superstar Zinedine Zidane had his shirt ripped from his back and had to be escorted off the field by police. And all of this from a hand-picked crowd, made up mainly of schoolchildren.
In the official programme, Michel Santini and Fernand Sastre, the joint tournament chiefs, made much of the decision to hold the draw outdoors in front of such a large crowd, but I am not sure the plan had been for Blatter and the Chairman of the French FA to be roundly booed whenever they appeared on stage. There was already a hostile atmosphere brewing in Marseille.
Dividing the thirty-two countries into eight groups of four could be done in a matter of minutes, but that would spoil Blatter’s fun. A short, tubby man with a round, jovial face, Blatter was on course to succeed Havelange. He slowly unscrewed the little balls and pulled out small strips of paper bearing each of the countries’ names. England had missed Brazil, Italy, France, Spain and Holland. That left groups headed by Germany, Argentina and Romania. It was Romania we wanted and it was Romania we got, along with Tunisia and Colombia. No one was complaining.
Immediately after the draw I made my way towards the VIP section, where I flashed my AA membership card and walked into the lobby. I found Graham Kelly and Pat Smith trying hard to disguise their relief at what was a kind draw. And it helped that they were going to be in Marseille for another twenty-four hours, where England were to play their opening game against Tunisia. It would give them an opportunity to count the number of glass-fronted bars around the Vieux Port where thousands of England supporters would gather for refreshment six months later.
‘Where do you expect the English fans to stay?’ I asked Smith.
‘Well, the French like camping, don’t they?’ she said.
Hoddle was doing his best to make the group look tougher than it was. ‘It could have been a lot easier,’ he said.
Anything would have been easier for the Scots, drawn with Brazil, who they would meet at the opening match of the tournament, and Morocco and Norway. Craig Brown, the coach, didn’t seem to mind much. He told reporters: ‘It is real Roy of the Rovers stuff for us to be involved in the first match and at a new stadium which has an 80,000 capacity and on a day that will be a festival of football throughout the world. We have played them eight times and never won, so I obviously wanted to avoid them. But I always love facing the Brazilians and we will certainly be well prepared. There are often upsets in the opening games of World Cups.’
Outside the VIP area, I saw Geoff Hurst drifting behind a pillar. ‘We’re very fortunate,’ he told me, ‘but if we were really feeling greedy we might want to have swapped Iran for Colombia.’ Then Bobby Charlton appeared out of nowhere wearing his England 2006 badge. ‘You have to say it’s an ideal group for us,’ he said. ‘Not that I know a lot about Tunisia.’
For the next couple of hours, clusters of TV cameras gathered around various coaches. Steve Sampson, the American national coach, was upbeat about the prospect of America playing Iran, with whom his country had severed diplomatic contact in 1979, when Iranian terrorists stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. ‘We will try not to allow the political ramifications to influence our preparation,’ he said, fashioning a career in the diplomatic corps once he got sacked from his present job. ‘I hope we can use the game to bring the two countries closer together.’
Even the French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin,
