England set to be second seeds

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 that 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.

It also means England and Turkey would be kept apart in the group stage - which would no doubt be welcomed from a security point of view.

A strong pot of third seeds could include Germany, Holland, Croatia and Russia while if they succeed in their play-offs both Scotland and Wales would be among the fourth and bottom group.

The draw takes place in Lisbon on November 30 and will divide the 16 qualifiers into four groups of four teams, each containing a top seed, second seed, third seed and fourth seed.

The results will be intriguing. There is the possibility of Sven-Goran Eriksson's side ending up in a 'group of death', such as France, England, Spain and Switzerland, or even perhaps a 'group of life' Sweden, England, Croatia and Greece.

Meanwhile the Football Association are to ask England players involved in the tunnel incident in Istanbul last weekend to provide their version of events. The FA have been required to give a written submission to UEFA as part of the official probe into the melee at half-time in the Euro 2004 qualifier against Turkey.

The FA are understood to have until the end of next week to complete their internal inquiries, which will include contacting several England players, such as David Beckham, Emile Heskey, Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell, as well as head of security Ray Whitworth.

All four players were pictured at the heart of the incident, captured by a Turkish television cameraman, though it has so far been claimed that Turkish players Alpay and Hasan Sas allegedly provoked the ugly scenes.

Alpay has nevertheless tried to blame Beckham, while Turkish Football Federation spokesman Metin Kazacioglu insisted: "Both sets of players were spitting and there were English players trying to punch, it's clear on the video."

The initial signs were that England players and the FA would not face any charges, although UEFA, who are studying the report of referee Pierluigi Collina and video footage of the incident, continue their investigation.