Football: Romanians change venue

ROMANIA'S Football Federation has changed the venue of today's World Cup warm-up match against Moldova amid acrimony between the national team's fans and players.

"The FRF has decided to move Romania's last friendly against Moldova because of disputes between the players and Bucharest's spectators," the FRF general secretary, Adalbert Kassay, said yesterday.

Kassay said the kick-off for Romania's last friendly before the World Cup would also be brought forward by two hours as the stadium in Poliesti, 60 kms north of Bucharest, has no floodlights.

The move will please Romania's players who have complained vigorously about the fans' taunts in Bucharest.

Chelsea's Dan Petrescu said Romania should consider playing their matches further away from the fans who barracked the team during Wednesday's friendly against Paraguay.

"Maybe we should not play in Romania anymore," he said. "Maybe we should play in Bulgaria."

Spain's coach Javier Clemente is unhappy with his World Cup training ground after inspecting it and finding holes as well as goals.

The coach inspected the pitch at Chantilly, to the north of Paris, on Thursday night immediately after the Spanish squad flew into Charles De Gaulle airport for the World Cup.

Spanish reporters said officials had tried to find an alternative ground in the area but the other main one at nearby Senlis had already been allocated to the Italian squad.

Mario Zagallo, Brazil's coach, insisted yesterday that there had been no fall-out with his volatile striker Edmundo. Edmundo was reported to be involved in a dressing room argument following Sunday's friendly against Athletic Bilbao after claiming that he had not been passed the ball.

In Argentina, a judge investigatingthe case of Diego Maradona allegedly shooting four reporters with an air rifle granted the former Argentina captain permission on Thursday to leave his country for 15 days to go to watch his country in the World Cup finals in France.