Football Trust hit by lottery

The impact of the National Lottery was highlighted yesterday when the Football Trust announced it was turning to the FA Premier League and National Sports Council to help fund work demanded at grounds by the Taylor Report.

The Trust has been forced to put on hold money it had hoped to earmark for stadium work in the lower divisions of the Football League because of the dramatic impact the lottery has had on its funds. The Trust's income from its prime sources - weekly pools and spot the ball competitions - has fallen so dramatically that it has only pounds 15m left to allocate for ground improvements until the year 2000.

Liberia's sports minister, Francois Massaquoi, thinks the six-match suspension of the Milan striker George Weah by Uefa was racially motivated. European football's governing body banned Weah, last year's World, European and African player of the year, for half a dozen European matches for headbutting Porto's Jorge Costa last month.

Massaquoi said: "We believe it was racially motivated, a design to deny him a second world title because a black man shouldn't dominate the world for the second time."

The South African-born striker Sean Dundee has been granted German citizenship. Dundee, who was courted by the Republic of Ireland when it was learned his grandparents were Irish, plays for Karlsruhe and is the Bundesliga's top scorer this season with 13 goals. He applied for citizenship using a fast-track method reserved for cases of "public interest," with the German federation backing him.

Romania's captain, Gheorghe Hagi, will not play for his country again unless the Romanian federation's press officer is dismissed. Hagi, who plays in Turkey for Galatasaray, said the federation's Sorin Satmari had fabricated an interview, published in the Bucharest daily Ziua at the weekend, in which the midfielder allegedly said his former club Steaua Bucharest were badly managed and drove players out of the country by paying poor salaries.

A car dealer in the United Arab Emirates has bought all the tickets for the semi-finals and final of the Asian Cup to give them away to the public at their showrooms in the country. The car dealers paid one million UAE dirhams (pounds 175,000) for them.