Football circus without clowns

One consolation for Paul Gascoigne, though it was probably not being mentioned in Sheryl's parlour yesterday, is that he is not the first gifted-but-troubled creator for whom everything ultimately went kebab-shaped - though he may be one of the last.

In fact, such is the length of the list of even recent tumultuous souls, it is as if playing the role of the central spark of creativity needed to be undertaken only with the aid of heavy protective clothing. Nor is it a peculiarly English feeling; it embraces players from all countries and every continent and with football changing tactically and physically we are probably witnessing the end of the colourful, spontaneous and unreliable artist.

With no Gascoigne at the World Cup we will have to look to the veterans, namely Colombia's Carlos Valderrama, and that haircut, Romania's much-travelled Gheorghe Hagi and Bulgaria's Hristo Stoichkov, joint top scorer in the United States last time, for flashes of eccentricity as well as brilliance in France this summer.

For the first time in five tournaments there will be no Diego Maradona to rely on for moments of madness and badness and with Valderrama approaching his 37th birthday, Hagi his 34th and Stoichkov his 33rd, this will probably be their last chance to entertain us.

In their place is a newer breed - "athletes", Glenn Hoddle described them yesterday - Frenchmen like Didier Deschamps, even Arsenal's Patrick Vieira or muscular Dutchmen like Edgar Davids.

Individually they may all have their quirks, and the Dutch tendency to argue internally has been a World Cup constant, but on the pitch these are players whose discipline usually overcomes the unpredictability of any possible maverick personality lurking within.

In the not-so-distant-past even the Germans have had characters such as Bernd Schuster, whose sheer arrogance and belief in his own ability meant that he frequently broke free of the traditional Teutonic rigidity, arguing with no less than Johan Cruyff at Barcelona and strutting around the park apparently indifferently when representing his country.

Matthias Sammer, although nominally a sweeper, is still a player with the creative impulse and is another whose presence alone added some thing to every occasion but he too will miss the finals in France - injured, not overweight.

Other notable absentees who might have produced a different way of playing are Brazil's Juninho - even though his manager Mario Zagalo said that Juninho "would have given us an element of variety because we have no one else like him"; Italy's Gianfranco Zola, deemed dispensable by Cesare Maldini - at least Roberto Baggio will be around, if just for advice on Buddhism; and then there is David Ginola, the missing Frenchman.

The hair with the flair has to make do with commentating.