Blatter threatens to suspend Brazil

“Referees and members of the courts … cannot be called, Blatter was quoted as saying. “We won’t accept that. We won’t tolerate investigations that put at risk the rules of soccer.”

A Senate Commission looking into charges of corruption and tax evasion in Brazilian soccer has subpoenaed National soccer confederation’s banking records. It has also subpoenaed the banking records of the recently fired National soccer team coach Wanderley Luxemburgo and a company called Traffic, which apparently brokered Nike’s multimillion dollar sponsorship of the national soccer team.

Blatter said that if there is any interference by Brazil’s Congress, FIFA would suspend Brazilian soccer from all international play. “It’s not only the World Cup that’s at stake,” Blatter said. “It’s Brazilian soccer itself, a four-time world champion, that will be threatened.”

German coach impasse
BERLIN: No one would say on Saturday the plan exists and no one would deny it, but apparently the country’s soccer federation knows exactly how it wants to fill the vacant job of German coach.

Rudi Voeller will guide Der Mannschaft until the 2002 World Cup, while Bayern Munich’s Ottmar Hitzfeld is a candidate to coach it afterwards.

“I can see myself becoming National coach sometime, but I can’t tell you when that will happen,” Hitzfeld said.

Munich has refused to release Hitzfeld and Leverkusen is still fighting to keep Voeller, the popular interim coach expected to step down on May 31.“Those are two excellent people, I understand why they don’t want to give them up,” said the federation’s acting president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder.He wouldn’t say that was the plan, nor deny it, underpointed questioning by an ARD TV commentator. “We will talk to people in the next few days. We don’t have the pressure we did after the European championships, we don’t have to decide anything in the next eight to 14 days,” he said.