Belgium

A letter outlining FIFA's proposal for the overhaul of the transfer system has been forwarded to European Union competition commissioner Mario Monti.

The Russian Football Union is asking the government to bankroll its bid to host the European soccer championship in 2008.

Scotland is set to mount a bid to host soccer?s 2008 European Championships.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter said a venue switch for the Euro 2000 match between England and Germany from the small Belgian stadium of Charleroi should be considered to minimise the risk of crowd trouble.

Euro 2000 co-hosts Belgium will spend close to $25million on security arrangements for the tournament, which begins June 10th. The Belgian Minister of the Interior, Antoine Duquesne, revealed that Belgian government spending to guarantee safety during the tournament is estimated at a total of 25 million Euros (approximately US$23 million).

The Dutch parliament has rejected a private member's bill to prohibit black market sales of soccer tickets, a decision that threatens to undermine security at this summer's Euro 2000 soccer championship.

Germany's players will receive 150,000 marks ($77,160) each if they retain their crown at next year's European Championship finals, the German Football Federation (DFB) said on Tuesday.

Thirty members of the European Parliament have taken the French organisers of the soccer World Cup to court to force them to redistribute hundreds of thousands of tickets abroad.

European Union competition chief Karel Van Miert has said he would take a close look at whether plans for a breakaway European Super League complied with EU law.

Eurocard-MasterCard has confirmed it has signed up as an official sponsor for soccer's Euro 2000 tournament.

German media group Kirch has agreed to buy Swiss sports rights marketing company CWL Telesport & Marketing AG in a move to expand its international soccer business.

Soccer's international players' union FIFpro are likely to take the European Commission to court over new rules governing soccer transfers, saying they infringe players' rights and break European law.

Football appears to have been saved from chaos after "an historic" agreement between the game's two most powerful figures and the European Commission.

The Euro 2000 Foundation closed its doors and its books yesterday with an 18 million euro ($17 million) profit to be channelled to youth football in the Netherlands and Belgium, the tournament's co-hosts.

FIFA has welcomed the European Union's recognition that sport was "special" but said it wanted further progress on the tricky issue of player transfers.

Bayern Munich president Franz Beckenbauer has criticised the European Commission's (EU) plans to overhaul the soccer transfer system, saying they would cause players' wages to spiral out of control.