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The blueprint for the European Cup was laid down in pre-war Budapest, Vienna and Prague. Cris Freddi recalls the mayhem and magnificence of the Mitropa

The name derives from Mittel Europa (central Eur­ope) and the Cup was the baby of Hugo Meisl, international referee turned secretary of the Austrian FA and manager of the national team. After the Second World War, it couldn’t compete with first the Latin Cup, then UEFA’s three major club competitions and, al­though it staggered on in one form or another until 1992, ended up no better than an Intertoto.

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Apparent misfits in the Premiership, more than a few imports have gone on to have perplexingly good careers elsewhere. We tracked down three of them, Ernst Bouwes looking at Jon Dahl Tomasson

In the spring of 1997 his fellow players voted him Talent of the Year in the Dutch league, with Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Arnold Bruggink second and third. A couple of days after accepting the trophy, he scored a hat-trick against Vitesse Arnhem to go top of the goalscorers list, leaving quality players like Luc Nilis, Roy Makaay and Patrick Kluivert (and Gerald Sibon) behind him. While his goals took modest Heer­enveen to their first Dutch Cup final, about 20 clubs  were rumoured to be interested in signing him, with Ajax, Atlético Madrid and Bar­celona the most persistent. A transfer fee of about £2 million seemed a laughably small amount for a 21-year-old who had just made his international debut for Denmark. Yes, we’re talk­ing about Jon Dahl Tomasson.

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Finally, China have made it to the World Cup finals. They can hardly wait and nor can the Korean tourism industry. Zhang Wenya reports

If England fans think “30 years of hurt” was tough, pity their Chinese counterparts. China have been trying simply to qualify for the World Cup finals since 1957. Nearly 50 years of hurt – and considerable heaps of humiliation – have been the fate of fans in the world’s most populous country. Among a people for whom “face” (and not losing it) is of considerable im­portance, the procession of defeats in vital qualifying matches has been soul-destroying.

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Wednesday 1 Villa and Newcastle are both through to their respective “finals” in the Intertoto. John Gregory seems underwhelmed by his side’s away goals win over Rennes: “If we’ve got to play in the competition then qualifying for the UEFA Cup is what it’s all about.” Barry Town beat Porto 3-1 in the second leg of their Champions League tie. The Football League deny reports that Celtic and Rangers may be invited into this season’s Worthington Cup, although League chairman Keith Harris hopes to see them included next year: “They would help spice up the competition for our sponsors and improve its appeal to the television audience.” Celtic’s 4-3 win at Old Trafford in Ryan Giggs’s testimonial is enlivened by several near-fights, most featuring David Beckham. Dutch goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar is the subject of the first-ever transfer deal between Fulham and Juventus, moving for £7 million. Portsmouth sign 1998 World Cup star Robert Prosinecki from Dinamo Zagreb.

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Liverpool were supposed to be world-beaters in the early Eighties. But, given the chance to prove it, all they came up with was excuses, says Cris Freddi

The move to Tokyo saved the World Club Cup – or at least that’s how Europe saw it. Now that they no longer had to travel to South America to have lumps kicked out of them by Estudiantes and Nacional, Euro­pean clubs felt it was safe to dip their toes in again. A one-off match on neutral territory – English clubs in particular had been getting good at those. So how do you explain the first half here? Try the early goal per­haps. Liverpool weren’t especially good at recovering from those. Here they were caught flat-footed at the back by a flick from Zico that caught out Hansen and sent Nunes in to score.

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