He has not looked entirely fit although he was more comfortable against John Spencer and Gordon Durie on

He has not looked entirely fit, although he was more comfortable against John Spencer and Gordon Durie on Saturday than Switzerland’s Marco Grassi and Kubilay Turkyilmaz the previous week. Bergkamp and, if he plays, Patrick Kluivert, will present the stiffest test so far. Adams will be hoping that, by subduing them, he can also still the ghosts of the past.. Every nation has its matches it prefers to forget – England as much as anyone – but in recent times nothing opens the mental scars in a Frenchman more than a World Cup qualifier with Bulgaria two and half years ago.

France only had to draw in Paris to ensure their participation in the 1994 finals and at 1-1 with a corner in their favour and the match approaching injury time, a place in the United States seemed assured. David Ginola squandered possession, Bulgaria raced to the other end and Emil Kostadinov scored.
Bulgaria went on to finish third in the United States, while a French team that included Eric Cantona and Jean-Pierre Papin fumed with frustration at home. “I’m still scarred by that memory,” Laurent Blanc, the French central defender, said.It is with the double-edged anticipation of revenge and fear that France seek to extend their 25-match unbeaten run at St James’ Park tonight. If one side wins while the Spanish beat Romania at Elland Road, then the loser will be going home.Group B has been tight as a drum so far, but if any side have suggested they have more to offer it is France, whose elegant play, particularly from Zinedine Zidane and Youri Djorkaeff, has been undermined by an over- eagerness to concentrate on defence once in the lead.Bulgaria are less subtle, but boast the temperamental talent of Hristo Stoichkov, whose two goals in the tournament have taken his international record to 33 in 63 games. However, he may find opportunities more scarce without Kostadinov, who has only a 50-50 chance of recovering from a hamstring strain.Still, the Parma striker was on target yesterday at a press conference, when he walked out on Spanish journalists because of their “completely silly questions” and then insisted a Romanian was ejected “It was not my pleasure to speak to him,” he explained. “I will only speak to people who tell the truth.”A draw will probably be enough for the French, whose qualification record in the last two European Championships and 1994 World Cup is slightly better than Bulgaria’s should that come into play, but Aime Jacquet will not be tempted down that route. “Look what happened last time,” he warned.No team have failed to live up to their billing more than Spain, who arrived in England with a burgeoning reputation and have proved to be a team with limited ideas once they get near the opposition penalty area.Indeed, it is difficult to reconcile their possible qualification against Romania’s certain dismissal after the first two matches, in which Spain have twice had to score late goals to secure draws while the Romanians have had no luck at all.Against France, one goalkeeping error lost them the match, while they would have got a draw against the Bulgarians if the linesman had spotted Dorinel Munteanu’s shot off the bar had bounced a foot over the line.

It has left an urgent need to prove they are a better team than their record suggests.”We don’t want to go home without a point,” Gheorghe Hagi, the Romanian playmaker, said. “We want to go home to our fans with our heads held high and the only way we can do that is by getting a result against the Spanish.”. Minutes after the final whistle at Wembley on Saturday, heads in the crowd turned towards the Royal Box A roar went up, a regal wave was returned. Was it the Queen, we wondered, or perhaps footy-loving Harry and Wills? No. Milking the applause, as if they were the architects of England’s glory, were David Baddiel and Frank Skinner.

Apart from tormenting Jason Lee into shaving off his “pineapple” hairstyle, Frank Clark’s favourite comedians were responsible for England’s Euro 96 song, “Three Lions”. Their partners in crime were the Lightning Seeds, whose “Life of Riley” is the soundtrack to Match of the Day’s Goal of the Month competition, and the England squad.
The natural alliance between pop and football has been exploited ruthlessly by the record companies in their bid to extract some beautiful gains from Euro 96. There is even an “official” album of the tournament, The Beautiful Game. Most of its tracks, by bands ranging from Northern Uproar through Blur and Supergrass to the Beautiful South, have only a tenuous connection with the game. Black Grape and Massive Attack have made the effort, however, and the compilation also features the England single.Suggestions that Scotland’s song ought to have been titled “Three Games” are, sadly, looking less like a joke. “Purple Heather” (formerly “Wild Mountain Thyme”) is a transatlantic collaboration between Rod Stewart and the squad, a scarf-waving spine-tingler in the “Sailing” mode, made possible by the technology which paired Frank Sinatra and Bono.Superior to the Baddiel- Skinner number, on which waiting for the chorus is like waiting for Scotland to score, its proceeds go to the Dunblane Fund.The alternative Scottish anthem is “The Big Man and the Scream Team Meet the Barmy Army Uptown” by another from the Vialli-Furlong school of improbable partnerships, Primal Scream and Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh.

An infectious terrace-style chant-rant, its sleeve depicts the tartan ransacking of Wembley in 1977 and sports a sticker warning (boasting?) that the contents are offensive.The Bend It! series has proved there is a market for the collectable, if largely unlistenable, football songs by supporters, squads and sundry opportunists. England’s Glory, which collates 30 years’ worth from “World Cup Willie” to the “singing” of Kevin Keegan, Glenn Hoddle, Gazza and Lindisfarne and Billy Bluebrit (sic), is in the same, sublimely kitsch tradition.Helping the tartan army lug the carry-outs come Serious Drinking, whose power-chord charge through England’s 1970 chart-topper “Back Home” updates a discography that includes the classic footie 45, “Love On the Terraces”. It is a raucous antidote to Simply Red’s so-called official theme, “We’re In This Together”, a song in the same sickly, ersatz gospel vein as “We Are the World” et al.Other strange bedfellows on the CD racks include Dean Martin – whose 42-year-old No 2 hit “That’s Amore” is mysteriously being played everywhere as stadiums empty – and Ludwig van Beethoven, whose 173-year-old chartbuster “Ode to Joy” is the BBC’s attempt to recreate the success of “Nessun Dorma” in Italia ‘90. Curiously, coverage on German television is being introduced by Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger”.Talking of Britpop, the DJ spinning the discs before the Denmark-Portugal game at Sheffield hit on an early contender for the song of the next European Championship finals. Pulp’s “Disco 2000″ entreats us: “Let’s all meet up in the year 2000…”.. Far from accepting that his international career is over, Gianluca Vialli intends to put Italy’s coach, Arrigo Sacchi, “in trouble” by scoring as many goals as possible for Chelsea. Vialli, giving his first English press conference since he became Ruud Gullit’s first signing last month, was in no mood to forgive and forget after Sacchi controversially omitted the 31-year-old from his Euro 96 squad.
“It will be difficult for me to get back into the national side with Sacchi as manager,” he said.