The Turkish football federation yesterday increased the number of foreign players allowed on the field at one time from three to four. Leading Turkish clubs such as Galatasaray, Besiktas and Fenerbahce have for months been lobbying for the increase as they prepare to bid for European success next season.

Turkey 0 Croatia 1

1 Adnan Erkan Ankaragucu

TODAY'S

AFTER the clouds of coloured smoke which greeted them in Milan, Aston Villa step into the Avni Aker Stadium at Trabzon tonight amid reports that the Turkish team's followers are in the habit of firing guns into the air.

'WELCOME to the hell' was the message hand-lettered on the first banner the players and coaching staff of Manchester United saw as they arrived at Ataturk airport, Istanbul, on a sultry night last November. The next day, as Eric Cantona and Peter Schmeichel played chess on the balcony of a former sultan's palace overlooking the broad blue Bosphorus while their colleagues strolled through the hotel's manicured gardens, they may have thought they had arrived in paradise. But a few hours later, when they trotted on to the turf of Galatasaray's Ali Sami Yen stadium, they knew the truth of which the banner-artist had written.

NEAL ASCHERSON has written recently about the dangers of fascism in Britain. Now he has written enthusiastically about some people in north- east Turkey who, so he thinks, have embarked upon an odyssey to discover their identity ('Journey to the end of an alphabet', 7 November).

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GRAHAM TAYLOR has broken with take-each-game-as-it-comes orthodoxy by calling on England to 'thump' Turkey this afternoon, and set themselves up for the more demanding World Cup tie at home to the Netherlands in four weeks' time.