Injury worries for Bohemians and St Patrick's

BOHEMIANS and St Patrick's Athletic both head off today to the second legs of their UEEA Cup ties with injury doubts hanging over key players, with Turlough O'Connor having to legislate for, the possibility of Robbie Best's absence from the team and his opposite, number at Richmond Park keeping a keen eye on the fitness of Eddie Gormley.

Best went into the first leg of the match with Dinamo Minsk with an ankle problem that was to be cruelly exploited by the visitors when Vladimir Makovski turned the central defender and fired past Dave Henderson from 25 yards out.

One player definitely out is right sided midfielder Brian Mooney, who exerted considerable influence on the early part of last week's match until he was sent off for kicking his marker, after be had been obstructed on the edge of the area.

Tommy Byrne is likely to start in place of the suspended player while 18 year old Sean Maher, a former Stella Maris player, has been drafted in to the first team panel which heads off to Belarus this morning.

Gormley, meanwhile, has been suffering from a sore back since his part in the the first leg drama at Inchicore on Thursday. The midfielder set up two of his side's three goals in a 4-3 defeat although Brian Kerr said yesterday that he still expected the player to be fit in time for tomorrow night's game.

This evening the Republic of Ireland take on Italy in their opening match of the European Under 18 Championships in Luxembourg and team manager Maurice Price has named a strong team.

Bulgaria's Hristo Stoichkov has accused his country's soccer chiefs of cheating, players and threatened to quit if they do not resign. "The current, bosses are unworthy of Bulgarian football they are cheating us all the time," Stoichkov told state television over the weekend.

And local media reported yesterday that the volatile striker would quit the national squad if top officials from the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) did not stand down.

Stoichkov, visiting Sofia after signing for Barcelona on Friday in a deal which takes him back to the Spanish club after an unhappy year at Italy's Parma, criticised the BEU for axing former coach Dimitar Penev and dropping his nephew Lyuboslav Penev from the national team.

Dimitar Penev took Bulgaria to the semi finals of the World Cup for the first time in their history in 1994, but under his management at the European Championship last month the side failed to progress past the first round.

He was heavily criticised for playing his nephew in all three matches, particularly after Lyuboslav Penev scored an own goal in Bulgaria's 3-1 defeat by France.

The BFU refused to renew the coach's contract earlier this month, and dropped Lyuboslav Penev for insulting his Euro `96 critics on state television.

Stoichkov, the 1994 European footballer of the year, said the BFU had also lied to the players about the origin of European championship team equipment, which he said appeared to be produced in Bulgaria but was not.