Corporation apologises and pays undisclosed damages over false claim made in BBC Radio 5 Live interview

The BBC has apologised and paid undisclosed libel damages to West Ham's manager, Gianfranco Zola, and first-team coach, Steve Clarke, over false claims made in a BBC Radio 5 Live interview that they were planning to move to Chelsea.

James Quartermaine, a solicitor acting for the pair, told Mr Justice Eady in the high court in London today that, during a Radio 5 Live show in February, a contributing journalist, Harry Harris, wrongly alleged they had attended an interview with the Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich the previous week with a view to becoming the club's management team next season.

He added that the BBC had accepted the allegation was without foundation, and had agreed to pay Zola and Clarke damages and their legal costs.

David Carrington, a solicitor acting for the BBC, said the corporation did not endorse the comments made by Harris, and apologised for any distress caused.

Both Zola and Clarke enjoyed successful playing careers with Chelsea, with Clarke going on to work as assistant to the club's former manager Jose Mourinho, and his replacement, Avram Grant.

However, Quartermaine said Zola and Clarke were - and remained - under contract to West Ham. Attending an interview of this type, unauthorised by the club, would have constituted a breach of their employment terms and, in Zola's case, FA Premier League rules.

"The broadcast of this unfounded allegation caused Mr Zola and Mr Clarke acute distress and anxiety as it was understandably feared that it would damage their relationship with their employers and with the players and fans of West Ham United," Quartermaine told the court.

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England's World Cup-winning fly-half could find a new lease of life at Toulon as Jonny Le Drop

Here is a topical quiz question: name the England rugby player who is still under 30 yet widely considered to be ancient history? It can't be Jonny Wilkinson because he's been around for ages. Sorry, what's that? Jonny is still only 29 (for a few more days) and is about to finalise one of the most lucrative deals in world rugby. Pause for a second and read that last sentence again. Maybe Toulon's owner, Mourad Boudjellal, is shrewder than people think?

For those of us at Kingsholm on the fateful night over seven months ago, when Jonny dislocated a kneecap while playing for Newcastle against Gloucester, it is impossible not to wish England's battered hero a fulfillingbon voyage,regardless of the outcome. Imagine how Tomás O'Leary must be feeling after being ruled out of the Lions tour with a broken ankle, then multiply it by a factor of approximately six. Ever since 2003 Wilkinson has been dogged by so many injuries it would clutter the blogosphere to list them all. He has played a meagre 18 Tests for England sincethatdrop-goal against Australia in Sydney. If anyone deserves a lucky break, it is surely he.

And yet, inevitably, familiar nagging questions will pursue him across the Channel. What, exactly, are Toulon expecting for their estimated €1m (around £900,000) a year? A tanned figurehead who will be knackered again within a few weeks? Or a top-class international player still more than capable of playing winning Test rugby and rounding off his England career in style at the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand? No one knows, least of all Wilkinson himself.

Assuming he passes his "stringent" medical and signs on the dotted line next week, I suspect Jonny Le Drop is well aware he is taking a leap into the unknown. Yes, he speaks decent French, having had plenty of spare time to brush up on his vocab. The presence of the anglophile Philippe Saint-André as director of rugby is also a bonus but, on the flip side, no one would accuse this season's Toulon pack of being the strongest in the Top 14. Scrambling around a foreign field making other people's tackles to justify his huge price tag? If that sounds worryingly like a potential recipe for another long-term injury, it is because it is.

No one, at least, can begrudge him for following the money. He has stuck with Newcastle through thin and thin when Leicester, to name but one long-time suitor, would have paid him anything he asked. His instinctive sense of loyalty pretty much ruled out the possibility of signing for another English club and the no-nonsense port city of Toulon, as French goldfish bowls go, is not as intense as some. If his knee – or any other body part – lets him down again, he can also argue that, in terms of anticlimactic signings, Sonny Bill Williams has already raised the bar to impossible heights.

And if Wilkinson does avoid the fate of Dan Carter and succeeds in not crumbling to the deck inside the first month, the psychological benefits could be substantial. A fresh start, no strings attached, nothing to declare except his mothballed genius. Whatever he did at Kingston Park, there was no escaping the back catalogue of rehab and specialist visits. With a full summer of pre-season preparation, some Mediterranean sun to warm the bones and a little bit of luck he may just find the inner contentment which, in the end, is what he craves.

You could argue, in retrospect, that he'd have been better off going to France when he was 21 and broadening his horizons at a young age rather than spending all those freezing northern nights agonising about his goal-kicking. Wilkinson, the world-record points-scorer, has been among the most extraordinary players the game has known but he has already paid a price far in excess of what Toulon are shelling out. If his departure is English rugby's loss in the short term, something tells me we have not heard the last of the migrating Falcon.

Up for the World Cup

The wannabe host nations of the 2015 World Cup set out their bids in detail in Dublin this week. England are the favourites but the usual question marks are there. As England have discovered in the past, securing the requisite votes is not always about the quality, or otherwise, of the bid document. This time, though, the International Board is likely to seek a financially successful tournament above all else. When the final decision is made in July, it will be a surprise if the Rugby Football Union loses out.

No slacking

Any England players hoping for a nice, restful summer would be advised to think again. Martin Johnson will be naming his squad to play the Barbarians and Argentina next week and, according to one member of the coaching staff, a dim view will be taken – "we won't forget it" – of anyone who suddenly phones in to report a tight calf on the eve of selection. For potential members of next season's Elite Players Squad, the sun lounger is best avoided.

• Ferdinand and Evans facing fitness tests
• Scholes, Carrick and Rooney likely to return

Sir Alex Ferguson will check on the fitness of Rio Ferdinand and Jonny Evans before finalising his Manchester United team to face Wigan at the JJB Stadium tomorrow.

Ferdinand tweaked a calf in training on Saturday that ruled him out of United's win over Manchester City, while his replacement Evans limped off with a hamstring injury.

John O'Shea will play in central defence if both are ruled out and Ferguson is also expected to make other changes; Paul Scholes, Michael Carrick and Wayne Rooney among those set to return as United chase the four points required to clinch the title.

Manchester Utd (from):Van der Sar, Foster, Kuszczak; Rafael, O'Shea, Neville, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evans, Evra; Ronaldo, Nani, Carrick, Scholes, Fletcher, Anderson, Park, Giggs; Rooney, Tevez, Berbatov, Macheda.

Barcelona may be set to surpass the record this season, but that shouldn't diminish the achievement of John Toshack's 1989-90 Real Madrid side

Life's 100 club is nowhere near as exclusive as football's. When a team scores 100 league goals in one season they don't receive a telegram from the Queen, but they do receive a place in the pantheon. Such an achievement was the norm in the Pleasantville world of the Forties and Fifties, but then so was dignity. A century of league goals have not been been scored inSerie A since 1950-51, and inEngland's top flight since 1962-63.

In La Liga it has only ever happened on three occasions: Barcelona this season, of course, but the other two instances were under British management. Bobby Robson's Barcelona scored102 goals in 42 games in 1996-97, while John Toshack's Real Madrid managed a staggering107 in 38 games in the 1989-90 season. Barcelona should get thefive goals they need from their final three league gamesto break that record, but that hardly diminishes the achievement of Toshack's team.

What makes this triumvirate more remarkable is that all three managers were in their first seasons at their respective clubs – and, in the case of Robson and Toshack, their only full seasons. Real, who were chasing a record-equalling fifth consecutive La Liga when Toshack arrived, hada superb team, which contained four of the celebratedQuinta del Buitreand was described by the club president, Ramon Mendoza, as the "best Real Madrid side for the past 25 years". But never before or since – not with Di Stefano and Puskas, or Zidane and Ronaldo – have they hit such heights. And in an age of two points for a win, a league-winning margin of nine points represented a canter.

Real's form on the road was no more than decent by champion's standards, with nine wins from 19 games, but their statistics at the Bernabeu were simply mind-boggling. They won 17 and lost none of their 19 games. They scored 78 goals, an average of more than four a game, and only twice did they fail to score three. That record, which Barcelona won't be passing unless they put 18 past Osasuna in their final home game, was even more impressive given the mohican of dried mud down the centre of the left half of the pitch. Overall their scoresheet included two sevens, a six and four fives.

A bunch of fives was consistently rammed in opposing defenders' faces by the serialPichichi Trophywinner Hugo Sanchez. He scored an absurd38 in 33 games, equalling the record set by the remarkableTelmo Zarrafor Bilbao in 1950-51. Apart from that the goals were spread throughout the team: the midfielder Rafael Martín Vazquez was the next best with 14.

Ironically, given what was to follow, the only additions Toshack made to the squad in the summer of 1989 were defensive. He signed the the uncompromising Argentine stopper Oscar Ruggeri from Logrones for £550,000, describing him with relish as a "mean bastard", and paid Valladolid £1m for a 21-year-old Fernando Hierro. Those two tended to play as the markers ahead of the goalkeeper Paco Buyo in a 3-5-2 system, with either Manuel Sanchís or the languid German Bernd Schuster at sweeper and the other in midfield. Chendo and Rafael Gordillo were the wing-backs, while the other central midfielders were the brilliant Spanish pair of Míchel, a cocky, virile playmaker of rare intensity, and Martín Vazquez, a waspish, technically superb ballplayer who was lethal from 20 yards. Emilio Butragueño,perhaps less prolific than we tend to rememberbut a constant creative menace in the hole, supported Sanchez with 10 goals and Sebastian Losada, a promising young striker who would ultimately retire of his own volition at 27, added eight league goals from just eight starts and four substitute appearances.

Despite the quality of the squad – or more probably because of it, and the consequent expectations – Toshack's start was not the most comfortable. Míchel classily passed them into the lead from 22 yards in the first five minutes of the opening game at home to Sporting Gijon, one of a number of brutally fast starts at the Bernabeu, but they were jeered and whistled towards the end of a routine 2-0 victory. Even though Madrid trashed the eventual runners-up Valencia 6-2 in their next home game, all was not well, particularly when Toshack committed two cardinal sins: losing to Barcelona and, worse still, going out of Europe at the first major hurdle.

Having drawn their first two away games 0-0, Real lost 3-1 at Barcelona in the third: this paper said that they were "close ... to a 9-1 defeat", and the misery was compounded when, absurdly given the scoreline, Schuster was sent off in the last minute for timewasting. If that result wasn't a reflection of the game, nor was a 2-1 aggregate defeat to their Milanese nemeses in the second round of the European Cup. The European Cup had become the holy grail for a club that had not laid hands on it since 1966, but Madrid were palpably inferior and drew heavy criticism for a perceived excess of physicality, most notably when Sanchís was sent off late in the second leg for booting Diego Fuser. In this paper, David Lacey wrote that "the club that won the first five European Cups by putting skill above cynicism have gone out kicking."

When they lost 2-1 at Real Sociedad three days later, with John Aldridge scoring the first goal, Toshack was under all sorts of pressure, even though Madrid were top with a perfectly acceptable record of six wins and two draws from the first 10 league games.El Paisreported that he had received a rollocking from Mendoza for his chippy dealings with players and the media, and that he would be replaced by the summer.

Yet the storm soon passed as Madrid began to put some serious scores on the doors. They won eight of the next nine, scoring 29 goals in the process, to lead by six at the halfway point, and would not lose another league game. They burned the rest of the league off with a remorseless consistency and, when they beat Barcelona 3-2 at home in mid-February to move six points clear at the top with 12 to play, and nine clear of Barça, there was a general acceptance that the race was run.

Not that Madrid were without hairy moments. In November they needed two goals in the last 15 minutes from Sanchez to overturn a 2-1 deficit attheir future bogey ground in Tenerife. In January, Sanchez scored a late equaliser at Gijon. In March they scored twice in the last six minutes to come from 1-0 down to beat Sevilla, with the winner coming again from Sanchez. And even after the title was won with four games to spare – ironically by virtue of a 0-0 draw, away at Valladolid – they had to fight hard to maintain their unbeaten run. In the very next game, they recovered from 2-0 and 3-2 down at home to Logrones to draw 3-3; and six days later, in their final away game, they were 2-0 and 3-1 behind in the derby against Atletico before eventually drawing 3-3 after Hierro's Metgod-like 90th-minute free-kick.

That was one of a number of glorious goals. Perhaps the best came from a fairly unlikely source: Sanchís, who scored at Logrones after a stunningly accomplished one-two (after 6.10 of this video). There were more than 10 direct free-kicks from Sanchez, Schuster and Hierro, including Sanchez's gleeful spank from an apparently prohibitive angle in the 4-1 rout of Cadiz. There were Schuster's solo goals against Cadiz and Atletico, Aldana's delightfully insouciant lob into a space the size of a postage stamp against Malaga, and Losada's overhead kick in defeat at Sociedad; there was Butragueño's exquisitely delayed pass for Míchel against Osasuna and Vazquez's cake-icing rasper in the 7-2 win over Zaragoza. Vazquez also scored from a ludicrous angle against Castellon.

After that game, a 7-0 evisceration, David Lacey wrote: "There is something not quite right about the way Real go from strength to strength in their domestic competition after looking second rate in the European Cup." The failure to progress in Europe certainly cast a slight shadow over the season,as did the Copa del Rey final defeat to Barcelona, and the gap between Serie A and La Liga has rarely been bigger than it was in the late Eighties.

Domestically, the competition might have been stronger: Barcelona lost their first three away games and, at that stage, were a truly effective team only in Johan Cruyff's dreams. But this is all nitpicking really. The bald facts say it all: Real scored107 league goals. And even though Toshack was gone by November – sacked, funnily enough, because of domestic rather than European results – the memory of the good times will surely endure. Even if he lives until he's 107.

You can see all 107 of Madrid's goals by clickinghere, andhere. You can get brief details of their league fixtureshereand full details of their entire seasonhere, including complete line-ups for their 6-1 win over West Brom in the semi-final of the end-of-season San Jose Trophy in California.

AFP - Newcastle United manager Alan Shearer praised the"courage"of his players after their morale-boosting 3-1 win over north-east rivals Middlesbrough here at St James'Park.