Not so long ago the only net football fans were interested in was the one they hoped their strikers would put the ball into. But now fans across the globe are surfing the information superhighway to get the latest up-to-date World Cup news on the other net - the Internet.

For Euro '96 there was a smattering of dedicated websites, but for France '98 the Internet seems to be awash with sites providing information and statistics, plus sophisticated interactive elements.

All the World Cup sites contain an enormous amount of detail about the teams and the venues, often including a spot of history. Pickles the dog, which found the stolen World Cup under a bush in 1966, features prominently.

The official site can be found at www.france98.com. This site was launched in May last year and, prior to the start of the competition, was receiving about 20,000 visitors per day making it one of the most popular Websites in the world! Among the 170 visiting countries, the United States, Japan, France and Brazil are at the top of the list.

Many of the sites include a bulletin board where you can leave your comments. At www.finalwhistle.com a favourite comment was from Hong Kong: "ENGLAND must get world cup". Nice and to the point.

Gary's Golden Boots section of the BBC's world cup site www.france98.beeb.com features all the scorers from the World Cup Finals. Join in the World Cup Poll at worldcup.soccernet.com by giving your opinion on who Glenn Hoddle should choose as Alan Shearer's striking partner.

To relieve the tension of a penalty shoot-out, try your hand at being the goalie in the "Arcade" at Soccernet's site. This is one of the sites where you can follow every match from France '98 live - you'll be able to track every shot, foul, save, corner kick, and booking.If you would like to get blow-by-blow coverage on the Internet then it's a good idea to think ahead. You are likely to require some Shockwave software and you won't want to miss a fourth-minute goal while you wait for it to download.

www.intsoccer.com is the home of the International Soccer Player Rating System. You are given the chance to rate the players or vote on who you believe should be in a World Eleven team. This site boasts the Ultimate Bulletin Board.

A quick look round the Web revealed about 25 of the teams had a website of some sort. An unofficial England website is at www.england98.com, or for Scotland try www.scottishfa.co.uk. The Jamaican team site is www.thereggaeboyz.com and has the usual info on the team, plus Jamaican recipes.

Some of these websites will be very busy over the next few weeks so, if you get a Fatal Error when you search for them, don't despair. Hit the Refresh or Reload button and your browser (computer software for surfing the web) will have another go at getting you the site.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.