SOCCER/News round-up: Marseille have taken Manchester United's Fabien Barthez on loan until June. The 32-year-old - still first-choice goalkeeper for France but only third in the pecking order at United - cost £7.8 million when he arrived in the summer of 2000 and has a £70,000-a-week contract that ties him to Old Trafford until June 2006.
Barthez, who last appeared for United's first team against Blackburn in April, is keen to play in the run-up to Euro 2004 and for a club where he played 106 league games from 1992-'95.
Marseille's second choice goalkeeper, Cedric Carasso, seriously injured a knee last week while the club's main goalkeeper, Vedran Runje, says he is unconcerned about the competition.
"He will have to show he is better than me," the Croatian said. "I didn't come to Marseille to sit on the bench. I am not going to be frightened, even if I respect him a lot."
On Monday, meanwhile, Alex Ferguson will discover his punishment for a touchline outburst during his team's win at Newcastle, having opted for a personal hearing to answer two charges: one of improper conduct and the other of using insulting or abusive language to the fourth official, Jeff Winter.
Ferguson will admit to kicking the ball away after the referee Uriah Rennie had failed to award a decision in Manchester United's favour, and will also concede that he swore at Winter after being ordered to leave the touchline. However, he will deny calling Rennie a "cheat" and plans to criticise the match officials.
Ferguson's previous good conduct will be taken into account if he is found guilty, when he would be likely to receive a fine and possibly a short touchline ban. Harry Redknapp, the Portsmouth manager, was given a two-match suspension for a similar charge following his team's draw at Wolves last month.
The English Football Association is not expected to announce what charges, if any, Rio Ferdinand will face for missing a drug test until next week.
The United defender, who is not suspended and is thus in line for a sentimental return to his former club Leeds for a league game tomorrow, has been told to hand his mobile phone records to the FA's compliance officer in order to ascertain the extent of his attempts to rectify his error of missing the test after twice being told to attend.
The FA has announced that Brendon Batson, a former deputy chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, will gather information from the England players who were present for the unseemly brawl with the Turkey team during Saturday's Euro 2004 qualifying match.
"UEFA have requested views from the FA by Friday, October 24th, and Brendon's role will be to pull this together," the ruling body said. "The FA will co-operate fully with UEFA's enquiries."
Meanwhile, England are set to miss out on being one of the top seeds for the Euro 2004 finals - meaning they could be drawn with holders France or hosts Portugal in the group stage.
UEFA will not confirm the seedings until after the play-offs have taken place but the tournament's regulations specify that they should be worked out on countries' records in qualifying for Euro 2004 and the 2002 World Cup.
That means France and Portugal are automatically included as top seeds, and the other two countries with the best records from the qualifying campaigns are, surprisingly, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
Italy, Spain and England have identical qualification records and they would be joined by Turkey as the four second seeds - assuming Spain and Turkey win their play-offs against Norway and Latvia respectively.
Guardian Service
