ROMARIO AND BEBETO ROCKING IN THE USA

As far as acts of pettiness go, refusing to sit next to two of your team-mates on the plane ride to a World Cup is right up there. If Bebeto and Muller didn’t know Romario quite so well, they might have been offended.

This was, after all, the same chap who once married his 17-year-old girlfriend on a football pitch for live television, and had more recently served a four-match suspension at Barcelona for clocking Sevilla midfielder Diego Simeone.

Ahead of USA 94, the free-scoring frontman had also asked coach Carlos Alberto Parreira to drop Muller in favour of old pal Edmundo, only to be rebuffed. But Romario’s own memory required a refresh: it was nearly him stranded out in the cold.

In December 1992, Parreira had called up