FRIDAY verdict announcement, close of Italian stock market today...

Late note: It is expected that 3 of the four teams involved, including
Juventus, the team who had 8 players in last Sunday's World Cup Final, will be
knocked down to Serie B, excluding them from participating in 2006-07 Champions
League season. Juventus are the current Serie A champions, 2005-06.

This is a huge story in the world of soccer, and we will know the result soon:

The fate of the four Italian teams charged with sporting fraud will be
revealed tonight after the closure of the Italian stock market but, should
Juventus, Milan and Fiorentina be relegated from Serie A, they would
automatically be ruled out of next season's Champions League, even if they were
to appeal successfully against the demotion. The fourth team Lazio would not be
allowed into the Uefa Cup.
"You will know the verdict [today] and the first-degree verdict [the verdict
given before the chance of an appeal] could already be enforceable as regards
European competitions," Guido Rossi, the head of the Italian FA, said yesterday.
"We have already agreed with Uefa that the first verdict will count if we will
not manage to meet their dates with the appeals." The Italian FA must hand Uefa
the lists of teams which will be involved in European competitions by July 27.


---------------------------------
Sneak preview the all-new Yahoo.com. It's not radically different. Just
radically better.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]