BLATTERGATE

"Racism
is if there are spectators, or there are movements of discrimination off the
field of play, but on the field, I deny there is racism. You may say something
to somebody who does not exactly look like you... but at the end of the match
it's forgotten. I would deny it. There is no racism, there is maybe one of the
players towards another, he has a word or a gesture which is not the correct
one, but also the one who is affected by that. He should say that this is a
game. We are in a game, and at the end of the game, we shake hands, and this
can happen, because we have worked so

Irish
football fan Conor Cunningham snuck into Ireland's Euro 2012 qualifier against
Estonia simply by donning an Estonia tracksuit.

And the
27-year-old from Cork ended up sitting next to Estonia's manager in the dugout after
his extraordinary display of nerve in Tallinn.

He ended up
watching most of the match from one of the best seats in the house, and even
joined in the Ireland team's post-match celebrations on the pitch after the 4-0
victory.

"I was
just determined to see the match - 11 of us arrived in Tallin for the game and
we were being quoted €600 for tickets," Cunningham told the

An unbelievable
goalmouth scramble from an Iranian second-tier match has made unlikely
heroes of the players involved.

Aboomoslem were hosting Mes Rafsanjan in their Azadegan League a few weeks ago, and the home side started an amazing attacking sequence from a free kick.

No fewer
than ten attempts on goal were repelled in the space of 20 seconds during the
astonishing sequence, with two Aboomoslem shots coming back off the woodwork and the rest
being desperately hacked clear by the plucky Rafsanjan defence.

The mad
scramble had been sparked when the goalkeeper ended up on the turf after

Manchester
United have snapped up a five-year-old superstar in the making - despite the
fact that he's a fanatical Manchester City fan.

Charlie
Jackson was first spotted by Old Trafford scouts two years ago, but the club
had to wait until he turned five to invite him down to train at the Red Devils'
development centre.

But such is Charlie's
devotion to Manchester City that the lad from Denton, Greater Manchester,
initially refused to play with United's up-and-coming stars.

"His
idols are Joe Hart and Mario Balotelli and at first he was mortified at
training with United," explains Charlie's

The 99 Premier
League matches played so far this season have yielded 295 goals in what has been a thrill-packed start to
the campaign.

With a
season's best tally of 39 goals added in last weekend's 10 fixtures, the great
and the good are trying to explain what is behind the change.

- So far, with 2.98 goals per game on average,
this has been the highest-scoring top flight season since 1967/68, which
had an average of 3.03 goals per game

The Premier
League has always prided itself on being an entertaining, competitive division,
and that has been cited as a reason that it is more popular

A manager in
Austria has been sacked after an extraordinary pre-match striptease.

FC Pasching
coach Adi Pinter went to astonishing lengths to show where his loyalties lay
before a third division match against Grazer AK at the weekend.

The
63-year-old Pinter, who played for and managed Grazer AK earlier in his career,
removed his shirt before the match to reveal the letters 'GAK' emblazoned on
his back.

Perhaps
unsurprisingly, Pinter's relegation-threatened Pasching side lost 6-0 and he
was dismissed immediately after the game.

Pasching president
Helmut Nussbauer said: "It makes no sense. We

Tributes flew in from the world of boxing all week for Joe Frazier who passed away aged 67.

Muhammad Ali: "The world has lost a great champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration. My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones."

George Foreman: "He was a wonderful man and a wonderful friend and the world won't be the same without him."

Mike Tyson: "Frazier and Ali were quintessential, the apex of pedigree fighting in which each man would not give an inch until they were dead. Their era was competitive fighting at the highest level. As a young fighter it has always been