Welcome to World Cup football without the ... er ... football.

Sky Sports pride themselves on having every angle covered in the money-talks arena of the Premiership.

But they are missing out big time of the biggest sporting event ever staged.

The satellite station are living off dogends and scraps from the Scotland and England camps and, after rooting through the World Cup rubbish bin, have also come up with their World Cup Phone-In show.

Hod only knows why Ford agreed to sponsor a dire 45-minute dull-a-thon, because this is as dodgy as a neglected mark one Escort and more tacky than the accompanying fluffy dice.

The second-rate pundits taking premium rate calls are cliche meisters Rodney Marsh, Frank McLintock and Alan McInally.

Presenter Matt Lorenzo appears acutely embarrassed by the entire affair - and well he might for this is the guy who fronted ITV's coverage in USA 94.

How the mediocre have fallen.

Sky's amusing in-season Soccer AM magazine programme takes the precaution of outlawing a list of dreary and dated topics from its phone-in, but here the opposite applies.

Dominating the debate are the now hackneyed Anderton v Beckham saga and the will we/won't we to and fro about England's chances of winning the World Cup.

And potentially interesting calls, for instance one pointing out the distraction of whistles blown from the crowd in France, are cut short to allow for more Marsh, McLintock and McInally wisdom.

More World Cup phoneys than phone-in, this is far from the Greatest Show On Earth.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.