Harry Pratt Reports TUCKING into a kebab in Soho after midnight can seriously endanger your World Cup hopes we were told this week. It isn't quite as hazardous as receiving death threats from a notorious South American drug cartel though, is it? Colombia's France-bound players - who meet Paul Gascoigne and the boys in Group G next month - are again the target of the country's narcotics-smuggling killers, news that puts the furore surrounding Gazza's diet and all-too-predictable newspaper polls alleging that 74% of the English population don't want him in the squad into pretty damning perspective. Alvaro Fina, chief of the country's football federation, said striker Victor Hugo Aristizabal and coach Hernan Dario Gomez received threats in anonymous telephone calls at the weekend and concedes that security will have to be stepped up. "These are frightening situations, caused by people who want to turn something positive into something negative, he said, but we have to carry on, with our heads up and without fear." These latest death threats are a chilling reminder of the appalling murder of defender Andres Escobar after the team's failure in America four years ago. But Aristizabal bravely claimed: "I'm not going to back down. What for? I love playing for the national team and when I was called up, I felt happy again." Former Newcastle striker Faustino Asprilla, now with Parma, quit the national team in protest at the Escobar shooting and vowed to do the same again this time. "If the threats to Aristizabal turn out to be true and he doesn't go to the World Cup, he said, then I'm not going either." Aristizabal has only been a substitute for Brazilian club Sao Paulo in recent months and his call-up for France 98 surprised many pundits. However, the nightmare that has followed his selection isn't anything like as startling. Indeed, it is becoming par for the course in one of the world's most violent countries. Gabriel Gomez, younger brother of the current coach, never played for the national team again after similar threats forced him to pull out of the squad two hours before a first round game against the hosts four years ago. It later emerged that an unidentified group in the city of Medellin (one of the centres for Colombia's drug industry) had sent a fax to the team hotel threatening to bomb the homes of the player and then-coach Francisco Maturana if Gomez was in the side. "There is no way I can play football under this pressure," he said at the time. His withdrawal looked a very wise decision weeks later when Escobar, who scored an own goal in the 2-1 defeat by the USA, was gunned down in Medellin. Humberto Munoz Castro, who worked as a driver for two brothers with whom Escobar had argued, was convicted of his murder twelve months later and is now serving a 43-year jail sentence. SATURDAY'S World Cup warm-up match against Scotland in the USA is going ahead as planned, the Colombian FA confirmed.

FRANCE TAKE GIANT STRIDES TOWARDS SPECTACULAR OPENING CEREMONY   WORLD CUP organisers planning a spectacular opening to the World Cup have had their secrets revealed by television station TF1. A huge party on the streets of Paris is planned to begin the day before Brazil face Scotland in the first game and one highlight will be four giant figures parading around the capital's streets. The 66-foot high figures, representing the continents involved in the tournament - Europe, Africa, Asia and America - will be escorted by 4500 dancers and acrobats in separate processions. The organising committee has refused to divulge its plans for the celebrations, but TF1 said the figures will set out from four of Paris' best-known landmarks - the Eiffel Tower, Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe, the Opera House and the Pont Neuf bridge. They will converge in the evening on the Place de la Concorde, at the bottom of the Champs-Elysees, in a supposedly symbolic meeting of world cultures and 2700 young footballers will gather in the square around a giant model of the World Cup trophy. Floodlights will light the square to a musical accompaniment. TF1, which will broadcast the show live, said the parade was designed by Jean-Pascal Levy-Trumet who staged shows to celebrate the 50th anniversary of General de Gaulle's call to resistance against German invaders in 1940, and of the allied landings in Normandy in 1944.

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