Not content with amassing a reputation as a diving prima donna he topped it recently by suggesting on Saturday lunchtime national television that he would let the Leicester City kit man (currently responsible for shaving the head of most of their squad and obviously sapping their strength in a major way!) shave off his golden locks only if someone donated, say, £25,000 for charity. This would be fine if he'd just left it there but, no, he had to add that he really hoped no-one would do any such thing. I'm sure every charity in the UK was happy to hear that!

UP THE LADDER TO THE ROOF

Following on from last month's dramatic news that John Gregory was worried that Mark Delaney might be damaged by being tagged as "injury- prone", and that Speed can read Russian and is "shocked", this column is concerned to hear that John Robinson has failed to read the many stories in the press and declared that the Wales v Argentina game hastily arranged because, a) our stadium has a roof, b) stadiums at the World Cup will have roofs, and c) no-one else will play them, is a fixture that reflects how far Wales have progressed in the past couple of years! Que! 

Somewhere in Doha I hear a little Qatari footballer telling their media that their prestigious friendly against Wales (described on the FAW website as officially the 34th best team of the 50 in Europe) was not arranged because, a) they had a team, b) we needed a game, and c) no-one else would play us, and was actually a reflection of how far they had come in the past couple of years. Thought not!

Now I understand why, in the midst of a frenzy of nostalgia programming where we are rapidly being reduced to the level of I Love Last Week, TV stations have wrestled to create quiz games like The World's Brainiest Footballer and somehow struggled to find both the contestants and an audience! I have previously wondered out loud in this column why the FAW doesn't sort itself out on the media front, but with this bunch of players to present as the public face of Welsh football, well… 

Ultimately, the Argentina game must be seen in context for what it was: a hastily arranged fixture that consequently always had the potential to backfire, football-wise, for one of the participants, if not financially, and doesn't really tell us anything of use. Of more interest should be the games against the Czech Republic and Germany, which again serve as potential banana skins for at least one of the participants, but should tell us a lot more about ourselves than the Argentina game.

NOTHING CAN STOP US
Equally interesting has been the public reaction to the draw for EURO 2004 qualifying in which Wales have been drawn in Group 9 with Italy, Yugoslavia, Finland, and Azerbaijan. 

Everybody I have read or spoken to has suggested that Wales have nothing to fear in this group and they should be looking to come second behind Italy. WHAT!? I have yet to hear a single convincing argument as to why this should be the expectation when there are simply no facts to justify it. I look forward to the qualifying games and the fantastically petty negotiations about who will beat Wales and when (sorry, I mean the fixture arrangements), and I expect an improvement in many respects, but finishing second? I totally expect us to draw less games in this group but, equally, I don't expect all of those draws to be converted into wins. We're on a learning curve and, realistically, looking at how those countries are rated, we should finish third or fourth and the learning curve will continue upwards.

POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES
Finally, back to Belarus. A story that died before it had chance to breathe. It has been suggested that the FAW have every right to be looking for some reassurances from those dodgy Azerbaijani types. At the very least, the FAW would have every right to ask for reassurances that no-one in the team speaks Russian (especially to Russian newspapers), but then we support one of the few nations in the world that is accused of corruption and sees fit to not even make a press statement about it! Will we ever find out how it ended?