Football: Injury to keep De Boer out until new year

The Ajax defender Frank de Boer will be out of the game until the New Year after damaging his left ankle in training on Tuesday.

De Boer, who missed last night's European Champions' League home tie with Auxerre, will miss the match against Grasshopper Zurich on 4 December as well as the Netherlands' World Cup qualifier in Belgium on 14 December.

Germany's most-capped international, Lothar Matthaus, and the national coach, Berti Vogts, have ended their long-running feud after a "peace summit" in Bonn yesterday.

Matthaus, 35, refused to hide his disappointment at being left out of his country's triumphant Euro 96 squad, a reaction which upset Vogts.

"There have been irritations but they should not and will not come up again," the DFB president, Egidius Braun, said in a statement. "This frank discussion will close this chapter."

Matthaus earned the last of his 122 caps in December 1994, shortly before he ruptured an Achilles tendon and had to take almost a year off.

It is unlikely the Bayern Munich captain will return to the national side, where Borussia Dortmund's Matthias Sammer has filled the libero role. But the meeting improves the chances for a testimonial match, which seemed in doubt while Matthaus was at odds with Vogts.