Since his arrival at Tottenham Hotspur, Didier Zokora has often looked like a man who couldn’t pass a leg of lamb without feeling the urge to fling himself over it. Last Sunday at White Hart Lane he excelled himself, crumpling to the ground to earn a match-winning penalty under a tackle from Portsmouth’s Pedro Mendes that wasn’t so much a challenge as a diffident inquiry.

Even before the news that Alan Shearer is to continue as a pundit on the BBC, this month has not been a good one for sport. Positive drug test has followed positive drug test. The cases of Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin, following the investigation into Barry Bonds and the banning of Tim Montgomery and Kelli White, have led a lot of people to ask, ”Are all these Americans on drugs?”

Playing in the stadium of his club side Marseille in 1998, South Africa’s lanky centre-half Pierre Issa put the ball in his own net twice against France and then muffed his team’s only clear-cut opening at the other end. World Cups have their zeros as well as heroes. Harry Pearson picks his XI to get nowhere.

I have seen any number of games that were preceded by choreographed ceremonies involving schoolchildren, acrobats, mime and giant balloons, but I never thought Middlesbrough would feature in one. Yet here they are in the PSV Stadion on Wednesday waiting for some kids in white suits to finish their act.

”You know that thing they say about David Beckham,” my mate Steve asked on Saturday night, ”about how he runs seven miles during the course of a game?” ”Yes,” I said. ”Clearly demonstrating how incredibly fit he is.” ”That’s what I thought,” Steve said. ”Then, the other day …”

A new report claims that for years officials at England’s top clubs have been carrying out the systematic abuse of hundreds of thousands of adults. Men and women have been lured in by football club staff with promises of romance, excitement and goals. What they have received instead is something many still find impossible to talk about.

”Opinion in England is divided over whether Jimmy Hill is an institution or ought to be put in one. We found out what Jimmy Hill would do if he ran the country and, as a follow-up, I’d like to hear what the country would do if it ran Jimmy Hill. I have only ever seen Hill once in public,” writes Harry Pearson.

David Beckham is handsome, boyishly charming, well muscled and makes no pretension of articulacy, virtues that in more sane societies than our own would have guaranteed him riches beyond the dreams of avarice — or even Michael Schumacher. Yet he is forced to hawk his services around Europe, struggling by on just £22 000 a year.

”As preparations for the grand prix season get under way, allegations that Bernie Ecclestone treats formula one like his personal Scalextric set are confirmed when he forgets to pack away all the drivers and his mother hoovers up Juan Pablo Montoya.” Harry Pearson gazes into his crystal ball and decides what won’t happen in sport this year.