Twelve months ago on a grim, grey Turin morning, I turned up at the old Stadio Communale to interview Frenchman Didier Deschamps, the Juventus midfielder destined to become the World Cup-winning captain of France 98.
Deschamps arrived late for the interview and immediately apologised. As he sat down for his interview, his mobile phone rang. Without even bothering to answer it, he simply picked it up and turned it off, saying: "Business is business, let's get on with this . . ."
As the new year begins, thoughts inevitably turn towards the past and the year that has been and, in that context, no event was more emotionally engaging than France 98.
However, for me, the World Cup year was marked as much by a number of seemingly minor moments during encounters with so-called "stars" as by all the obvious moments of athletic intensity.
For example, the idea that France might actually win the World Cup became a lot more serious after Deschamps had snapped shut his mobile phone and said that France maybe lacked a striker but would still do well. Business was business.
The idea that Chile might provide a minor World Cup surprise began to seem a little less ridiculous after meeting with Chilean striker Ivan Zamorano at Inter Milan's La Pinetina training ground last spring. When Zamorano arrived for a TV interview, he immediately noticed that a Chilean flag had been set up as a backdrop to the camera shot. He took one look at the flag and raised a clenched fist in the air, shouting "Chile, Chile" to an astonished camera crew.
Zamorano's sense of commitment to the Chilean cause flashed back into one's mind on the June day in Bordeaux when Chile opened their World Cup campaign with a unlucky 2-2 draw against Italy. Despite the soft rains coming in off the Atlantic, the Chilean fans were out in numbers, brandishing their distinctive flags and moving rhythmically to a very South American beat. Among the Chilean fans that day, too, were a number of Chilean exiles, political refugees from the Pinochet regime and people who had fled their native land 25 years earlier.
For some of them, it was obviously no small thing to stand on this foreign soil, surrounded by compatriots and wave their national flag, feeling proud to be Chilean again. For them, and indeed for Zamorano and Chile, it was a great World Cup, even if Brazil did stop the party in the second round.
Another meeting that struck a chord came with Croatia captain Zvonimir Boban at AC Milan's Milanello grounds near Varese, also last spring. Like many footballers, he was reluctant to do any sort of interview and immediately gave the impression of wanting to get it over with as possible.
Yet, his tone and his attitude changed when he once more recounted a story (already told in this column) of how in his days as a player with Dinamo Zagreb, he had been a fugitive from Serbian justice following an exchange of fisticuffs with a Serbian policeman who had been intent on kicking the daylights out of a Croat supporter. Croat pride, at least as far as his national team was concerned, had waned since the days of warfare in former Yugoslavia, he explained. Boban paused and then, almost as an afterthought, said that he had noticed a return of that national pride in the last qualifying games. If that sense of pride returns for France 98, we will do okay, he concluded.
As Boban limped off the pitch, morally and mentally destroyed by an uncharacteristic error that had allowed France back into a semi-final that, for a fleeting moment at least, was heading Croatia's way after Davor Suker's opening goal just after half-time, one felt extremely sympathetic to him.
Among many footballers interviewed during the year, none was sore relaxed, more at ease with himself than Roberto Baggio. When I met him in Bologna in mid-April, his chances of making the Italian World Cup squad let alone play in France 98 seemed very remote.
"I'll do my best," he said, "I'll play well and we'll see."
When circumstances conspired to leave Baggio guiding Italy's campaign in the early games of France 98, I recalled his sense of mental and physical well-being and was not surprised when his class and his cool nerve immediately set up one goal and he scored the other (from the penalty spot) in Italy's opening game against Chile.
Deschamps, Zamorano, Boban and Baggio are all now 30 or 30 plus. For them, another World Cup is unlikely. For them, France 98 will be hard to forget.
For me, too.
