Fed up with the World Cup already? Dying to get away from it? Then all you have to do is win this competition - and we'll get you away from it all!
And it's ever so easy! All you have to do is study the following five international soccer stories and decide if they are true or false. OK? Here we go, then!

1. In 1988 a mid-league Italian football team called AC San Michele was bribed to lose an important fixture against local rivals Testa Verde. All the players in the San Michele team were in on the scheme. The only thing they didn't know was that the Testa Verde players had also been bribed to lose the vital match. The result was that every goal one side gave away was matched by a goal surrendered by the other side; with twenty minutes left to play the score was already 7-7, and goals were still coming thick and fast. The crowd went frantic with disbelief when, in the last minute, as San Michele were leading 10-9, their goalkeeper Vicenzo back-heeled a goal kick " by accident " to give away an own goal, and make the final score 10-10.

2. Terry Constable was a young League footballer in the mid 1980s when he was caught by a cruel tackle by defender John Blutcher in a pre-season friendly. He never recovered from the injury and was forced to make his career outside football. However, being an astute businessman, he prospered, and the chain of clothes shops he now owns in the North Midlands (called Fine Fettle) has made him a rich man, with an estimated turnover of £3m.
John Blutcher, the man who crippled him, has not fared so well, and is at present playing on a free transfer for Batheaston Bypass Protesters, a successful but amateur team. Now, in a case which could make legal history, Blutcher is suing the man he injured for a share of his fortune, on the grounds that if he hadn't driven him out of the game with the clumsy tackle, Constable would never have become rich, and that it is all down to his challenge.

3. Most teams have formations which are variants on the basic 4-3-3 or 4-4-2, but in the 1970s the national team of Senegal tried something quite different. Under the management of little-known German footballer Dieter Kromm, they experimented with a 1-10-0 line-up. Kromm explained the intention as being to capture the ball from the opposition and then to surround their man who had the ball with everyone else in the team, so they could run upfield in a tight mass of ten people and simply run the ball into the enemy's goal. Not unlike a rolling rugby scrum, perhaps, though Kromm said he had never seen a rugby game.
Results were impressive to begin with, as it was virtually impossible to get at the man with the ball, and Senegal scored goals freely, even though they gave them away almost as freely due to the lack of cover, and their first three results were 11-7, 12-4 and 7-1 (monsoon stopped play). However FIFA decreed that the tactics were illegal as someone in that bunch of ten players must be off-side. Senegal started losing, and Kromm was fired and drifted into obscurity.

4. During a crucial end-of-season match in the Turkish premier league, there was a pitch invasion after the award of a hotly disputed penalty. Police came on and cleared the pitch of the two hundred or so angry spectators, but when the game came to be resumed there was no sign of the referee. It turned out that the police had taken him off the pitch together with the spectators, nor would they let him back on again on the grounds that he had been arrested for striking a police officer in the heat of the moment. The match was abandoned and replayed later. It is thought to be the only time that a referee has ever been sent off for retaliating.

5. In an international encounter between Spain and Paraguay in the late 1980s, the fiery Paraguyan striker Morbillo was shown the red card by Danish referee Arnoldsen after striking the opposite goalkeeper. Morbillo had never been shown the red card before. Moreover he was a trained lawyer, and a mixture of resentment and professional curiosity inspired him to look at the writing on the red card more closely. To his surprise, it said (in Danish) " Central Taxis, Copenhagen, On the Phone 24 Hours: Weddings and Airport". Morbillo said he refused to go off just for being shown a Copenhagen cab firm calling card. Arnoldsen admitted later that he had lost his normal red card and used one which he thought looked exactly the same. Morbilo was allowed to stay on the field but was later shown the yellow card, though not close enough to read it.

The Independent Monday June 20 1994