In June 1990, footballers representing the twenty-four nations whose teams have won through the preliminary rounds will meet in Italy to contest the fourteenth World Cup Finals. Not for the first time in the history of the world’s most popular sport, they will be competing in an atmosphere which can be realistically described as embattled and beleaguered. ‘There is tension in our national game as there has never been before—on the pitch, off the pitch, in the boardrooms and in the corridors of power
