Danes bank on English exiles

Four leading players in the Premiership have been included in Denmark's squad to play Greece in their World Cup Group One qualifying match on 9 October.

Peter Schmeichel, Manchester United's goalkeeper, and the West Ham defender Marc Rieper are joined by Jacob Laursen, who signed for Derby during the summer, and Allan Neilsen, who recently moved to Tottenham.

Claus Thomsen, of Ipswich, and the Rangers striker Brian Laudrup are also included in the 18-man squad for the match in Copenhagen.

Youri Mulder, the Schalke striker, has an ankle injury and has pulled out of the Dutch squad for the Group Seven match against Wales on Saturday. Guus Hiddink, the Dutch coach, will also be without the injured strikers Patrick Kluivert and Rene Eykelkamp, but he has not named a replacement for Mulder.

Hristo Stoichkov, who did not turn up for Bulgaria's Group Five match against Israel last month, was yesterday left out of the squad for the game against Luxembourg next week.

Hristo Bonev, the Bulgaria coach, made no reference to Stoichkov when he announced the squad. Stoichkov has not played for Barcelona recently because he has a leg injury.

Bonev has dropped the defenders Gosho Ginchev and Vladimir Ivanov and included two uncapped players, the defender Georgi Antonov the and striker Georgi Markov, both from Lokomotiv Sofia.

Bulgaria lost 2-1 in Israel and will be desperate for a convincing victory against Luxembourg next Tuesday.

Dusan Uhrin, the Czech coach, has recalled the veteran Miroslav Kadlec to bolster his defence for the Group Six match against Spain.

Kadlec, 32, who plays for the German club Kaiserslautern, has been plagued by an Achilles tendon injury recently, and missed the Czechs' 6-0 defeat of Malta in September.

Uhrin said that after watching Kadlec play in a league match at the weekend he had little doubt that the defender would be ready for the match. "I watched him play in the Cup-Winners' Cup and then last Sunday against Leipzig and he played well," Uhrin said.

Uhrin discounted speculation that he would drop his first-choice goalkeeper Petr Kouba, who has seen little action since he was transferred to Deportivo La Coruna from Sparta Prague at the beginning of the season. He rejected the suggestion that he might play Newcastle's Pavel Srnicek, saying Kouba was well suited to facing Spain, "especially since we will be playing at Sparta stadium".

Uhrin also said he expected the English-based midfielders Patrik Berger and Karel Poborsky, dubbed "the dynamic duo" by the Czech press, to join almost every attack.