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Gabriele Marcotti, who predicted the poor displays of France and Argentina in WSC two months ago, attempts to sort World Cup fact from fiction

For a competition that lasts 31 days – and one in which half the teams play just three matches – it’s quite remarkable that the World Cup is held in such high esteem as a barometer of footballing trends and relative strength. Especially a competition such as this one, where poor refereeing and bizarre episodes saw the World Cup lose a host of juggernauts (or potential juggernauts) before the quarter-finals, as fans of Portugal, Nigeria, Argentina, Italy and France will confirm. Still, this was not a 64-match exercise in futility. Once the hype subsides and the pundits go back to spouting the obvious about players whose names they can act­ually pronounce, we’ll be left with a neat set of mem­ories we can stow in the back of our consciousness.

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Friday 1 Portsmouth chairman Milan Mandaric threatens to withhold the wages of his players and coaching staff: “They expect to go through the motions and then to receive a huge wage packet. It’s extortion.” The PFA’s Gordon Taylor is unimpressed: “It’s quite naive really, it’s going back to the Dark Ages.”

Saturday 2 “You are blessed to to witness something like that,” says Arsène as Dennis Bergkamp scores another spectacular goal in a 2-0 win at Newcastle that keeps his team second. Frank Sinclair nearly matches that with a 30-yard lob at Middlesbrough, but it’s past his own keeper for the only goal of the game. Liverpool go third after winning 2-0 at Fulham. Andy Cole’s dismissal for a foul on Mike Whitlow during Blackburn’s 1-1 draw at Bolton prompts a right old rumpus, with a scuffle between players and a home steward, and both managers exchanging unpleasantries. Stan Ternent rounds on Burnley fans who boo their team after a home draw with Norwich keeps them fifth in the First: “They have champagne tastes on beer money.” Halifax are ten points adrift at the bottom of the Third after losing 3-1 at Leyton Orient.

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For day 12 of the WSC advent calendar we’re looking at on of the gifts given to baby Jesus; gold. In April 2002, issue 182, Bobby McMahon attempted to explain why South Korea took part in that year’s Concacaf Gold Cup and suggested a way to put the tournament out of its misery

On the world football scale, winning the Gold Cup is tantamount to winning the world’s tallest midget competition. Not only is it contested by teams from one of the weakest regions, Concacaf, it receives min­imal fan support and attracts almost no media interest. Ostensibly created in 1991 to help promote the 1994 World Cup in the US as well as to help the home country’s preparations, the competition replaced the Concacaf Championship which had been contested under various formats and with a vary­ing number of participants since 1941. Costa Rica dom­inated until 1989 with ten wins, while the Mex­icans, who you would have perhaps expected to lead, won only three.

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Brazil are in turmoil, Peru are in despair, and Chile are in the pool with a load of Colombian women. It's never dull in South America, as Leopoldo Iturra discovers

Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his use of magic realism, a style which deliberately exaggerates Latin American folk­lore and which allows anything to happen – from the appearance of Romanies who invent snow to immortal incestuous families.

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The annual Inner City World Cup for foreign communities living in London was held earlier this month. Filippo Ricci went along to see if England could make home advantage count

England has just staged a World Cup, though needless to say the hosts didn’t get past the group stage. The competition in question is the Inner City World Cup, a tournament open to London’s foreign communities and held annually since 1994. African teams have dom­inated, Ghana winning two tournaments and Sierra Leone five, including the most recent edition, played on August 12 and 13 in Raynes Park, when Pakistan lost 2-1 in the final.

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