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After looking painstakingly through all the surveys our readers sent in, Roger Titford explains the results

In an unusual turnabout, this year’s WSC survey gives Sepp Blatter a helping hand. Ever anticipating the key issues, we asked what damage you thought the number of foreign players was causing the game to­day. Of the first 900 questionnaires re­turned, 50 per cent said the England team was suffering, 45 per cent saw damage in the Premiership, 35 per cent in the Scot­tish Premier League and 30 per cent to the Scottish national side. Only 29 per cent felt the number of foreign players causing no damage anywhere in the game. Thirty-two per cent felt, like Sepp, the restrictions should be tightened, but 51 per cent thought they were about right.

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A goalkeeping blunder can be remebered more by fans then a 40-yard screamer. Cris Freddi takes us through some of the more memorable howlers

Let’s start with goalkeeping errors that decided FA Cup finals, shall we? There are enough for an article of their own. The most famous of all was perpetrated by a Welshman playing against a Welsh team, back in 1927. When Cardiff’s Scottish centre-forward Hugh Ferguson hit an ordinary ground shot from the edge of the area, Arsenal’s Dan Lewis had time to go down on one knee and scoop the ball into his midriff.

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Even with Ronaldo in one of his funny moods, Brazil rarely needed to break sweat to retain their South American title in Paraguay as Sam Wallace reports

At either end of the Defensores Del Chacos ground in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, stood enormous models of Budweiser cans which, at set in­tervals, would start to gyrate. Occasionally, a plastic bag thrown from the crowd behind the goal would sail over the cans, jettisoning in flight its cargo of urine. The irony was hard to ignore. No amount of expensive advertising ever quite managed to sanitise a gloriously chaotic Copa America 1999.

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Despite a successful pre-season tournament in Northern Ireland, it was all rather meaningless, as Davy Millar explains

The inaugural Belfast Carlsberg Challenge was adjudged to be a great success by nearly everyone involved. The promoter made a profit and Linfield and Glentoran each pocketed £50,000 for their efforts. Liverpool re-established contact with their Irish fans, sold a few more replica kits and got some much-needed trophy-lifting practice thrown in. And even if Feyenoord seemed occasionally confused by events, especially in defence, at least it got them out of the house for a while.

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WSC readers keep spotting players in the unlikliest places…

I was humbled when Archie Gemmill spotted me driving into the Forest car park to fetch some tickets, at what he regarded as an excessive speed. Before I had had a chance to park and get out of the car he ran over to me, told me to wind down the window and called me “a bloody moron”, before turning and walking away. James Crosby

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