Football: Extra finals tickets available

AN EXTRA 160,000 World Cup tickets, originally reserved for French fans, will be made available to national federations and individual foreign buyers, it was announced yesterday.

The decision, following legal pressure by the European Commission, should make several hundred extra tickets available to the Football Association and Scottish FA for England and Scotland's early round matches. It will also, in theory, make it possible for British fans to apply for the last batch of unsold tickets from the French allocation.

The decision followed a two-day workshop in Paris between Fifa, football's world governing body, the French organising committee and the 32 countries qualified for the World Cup finals in June and July.

Jacques Lambert, director general of the French organising committee, rejected criticism of the small number of tickets allocated to foreign fans. He said his committee had followed Fifa rules but the tournament had become a victim of its own success. "We have 2.3m tickets available and 2m requests. There is no way we can satisfy everyone."

None the less, Mr Lambert said the organisers of France '98 had decided to bow to pressure from the EU, which declared the original system of ticket allocation to be offside under European competition laws. There are 160,000 tickets for individual first-stage matches reserved for French fans but not yet allocated. Some of these - it is not clear how many - will now be given to national federations to boost their otherwise meagre allowance (only 9,000 or so seats for English fans, for all three first- round matches). The rest will be placed on public sale, under new procedures which have still to be decided.

Not all World Cup coaches relish the choice of having only two goalkeepers in their 22-strong squads with a third on standby in case of injury, as was announced on Monday. Sepp Blatter, Fifa's general secretary, does not recommend the new ruling either. "If one of your goalkeepers is sent off and suspended you are left with only one for the next match," he said.

He told a news conference at the close of Fifa's World Cup workshop in Paris yesterday that a third goalkeeper would not be allowed to be in France awaiting a possible call.

Italy's Cesare Maldini said he would be bringing three goalkeepers to the finals. Maldini said it was unthinkable to have one goalkeeper training alone and out of touch with the squad. "He will land out of the blue like a parachutist [if he's called on]," Maldini said.

Fifa confirmed yesterday that tackling from behind will become an automatic red card offence from the World Cup onwards and that referees will indicate to the team benches how much injury time they will be adding on to regular time.

Players testing positive for recreational drugs such as cannabis or marijuana at the World Cup finals will be kicked out of the tournament, Blatter said. "You can call them recreational, but they're still drugs. And they will be banned," he said.