Football: Southgate's injury responding to treatment

GARETH SOUTHGATE is still England's only doubt for Monday's game against Romania in Toulouse.

The Aston Villa defender was ruled out of yesterday's training session with foot and ankle problems. But Teddy Sheringham (hamstring), Alan Shearer and Tony Adams (sore feet) were all put through their paces during a 90- minute session at the England training camp here.

The coach, Glenn Hoddle, is hopeful that Southgate will be able to return to training today, but he admitted that it is too soon to decide whether he will be fit to face the Romanians.

Hoddle said: "We have only the one injury - Gareth Southgate - and he has improved considerably so that is good news. He has a bit of a foot problem on his sole which is quite painful and he's run awkwardly on it and jarred the ankle at the same time. It is responding to treatment."

Hoddle added: "The other three [Shearer, Adams and Sheringham] all trained today with no problems. In Adams' case he has had two days' rest after every game all season as a precaution. But he came through 90 minutes today with flying colours."

World Cup organisers yesterday challenged a travel company which claims it has had had 15,000 finals tickets stolen to produce the match and seat numbers.

On Thursday the American tour operator, Prime Sport International, reported that 15,000 tickets and hundreds of thousands of dollars had been stolen from its Paris office. But when seats were checked at Thursday's France against Saudi Arabia match, for which PSI supplied 504 tickets, the places were found to be occupied by fans with valid tickets.

PSI has offered a pounds 100,000 reward to recover the stolen tickets, which it claims are for all subsequent matches apart from the second round. It has also criticised both the organisers and French police, saying they were trying to cover up the poor organisation of ticket distribution.