Sporting Digest: Football

MIDDLESBROUGH were yesterday ordered by a Football League transfer tribunal to pay pounds 325,000 for Alan Miller, the goalkeeper they signed from Arsenal last month, plus a further pounds 100,000 when the 24-year-old makes his 50th appearance.

GORDON MILNE, 57, the former England defender and manager of Coventry and Leicester, is to resign as the manager of the Japanese club, Nagoya Grampus Eight.

UEFA decided yesterday to reintroduce the summer cup, now called the UEFA Intertoto Cup, next year. The new competition will comprise 40 teams who just failed to make it into European competitions. The winners of eight groups of five would compete in the quarter-finals, with the last four qualifying for the following year's Uefa Cup.

UEFA has received just one applicant to host the 2000 European Championship: a joint bid from Belgium and the Netherlands. The closing date is Monday.

TRANSFERS: Rod McDonald (forward) Walsall to Partick Thistle ( pounds 30,000 plus increments); Tony Kelly (midfielder) Bolton to Port Vale (free); Jim Bett (midfielder) KR Reykjavik (Ice) to Heart of Midlothian (free).

LEAGUE OF IRELAND Premier Division: Bohemians 3 Athlone Town 1.

JEWSON LEAGUE Premier Division: Histon 0 Watton 2.

GREAT MILLS LEAGUE Premier Division: Westbury Utd 2 Calne Town 4.

FRENCH LEAGUE: St-Etienne 1 Lyon 1; Bordeaux 2 Strasbourg 0; Le Havre 2 Sochaux 0; Lens 0 Cannes 2; Paris St-Germain 1 Auxerre 1; Nice 1 Nantes 3; Rennes 1 Metz 2; Martigues 5 Bastia 2; Lille 1 Caen 1.

PORTUGUESE LEAGUE: Sporting 2 Boavista 2.

BELGIAN LEAGUE: Seraing 4 Lierse 1.

RUSSIAN LEAGUE: Dynamo Moscow 0 Spartak Moscow 0; Tekstilshchik Kamyshin 2 Dynamo Stavropol 0; Rotor Volgograd 2 CSKA Moscow 1.

GERMAN LEAGUE: Werder Bremen 2 MSV Duisburg 0; Bayer Uerdingen 3 Eintracht Frankfurt 0.

THURSDAY'S LATE RESULTS: South American Super Cup first round second leg: Independiente (Arg) 4 Santos (Bra) 0 (agg: 4-1).