Terror on the Pitch

Bin Laden-funded terrorist cells dotted around France had been prepared to mount assaults calculated to cause mayhem, outrage and horror. Their targets were the United States Embassy in Paris, a nuclear power station (into which they planned to crash a civilian airliner in a chilling foretaste of later events) and the United States football team in their hotel.

Finally, before a live television audience expected to number upwards of 300 million, Bin Laden's Algerian cohorts planned an audacious on-pitch assault against the stars of the England team during their first group match against Tunisia in Marseilles.

Terror on the Pitch reveals startling documentation of the planning of these four horrific attacks and details an astonishing hit list, ordered by Al Qaeda's commander-in-chief, identifying which England players were to be singled out by his terrorists inside Stade-Vélodrome. Posing as stewards, the men would use grenades, handguns and TNT to attack the England team and fans. Had the plan succeeded, it would have surpassed the tragedy that befell the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics as the sporting world's worst-ever atrocity.

Amazingly, this true story has remained largely unreported for four years and only now is the extent of the plot revealed - and how close the terrorists came to succeeding.