Hamburg - This week's European Champions league matches could be a further indication that German top clubs Bayern Munich and Werder Bremen are heading in opposite directions.

Bayern are unbeaten in the Champions League and require only a draw at home to Steaua Bucharest on Tuesday to qualify prematurely for the knockout stages.

They lie third in the Bundesliga within striking distance of surprise leaders Hoffenheim and Bayer Leverkusen, whom the both play over the next fortnight.

Bremen, by contrast, face a Champions League exit on Wednesday when they visit Anothorsis Famagusta with no win in the first four games.

Madrid - Injury-plagued Real Madrid face a daunting trip to Belarus for a Champions League match which could shape the season for the nine-time European champions.

Bernd Schuster's troubled team is away to BATE Borisov in a Group H match as the Spanish champions scramble to reach the last 16 amid growing pressure on the German coach.

Real will ensure themselves of a place in the knock-out stage with a victory at BATE, providing Juventus avoid defeat away to Zenit St Petersburg.

But two defeats in the group to Juventus have dented Real's confidence, and a further defeat would leave them facing a tough last game in the group at home to Zenit to avoid a humiliating exit.

London, Nov. 24: England football coach Fabio Capello believes the team is as good, if not better than the team that represented Italian club AC Milan in the 1990s.

News of the World quoted Capello as saying that he saw clear similarities with a Milan side dubbed ‘The Invincibles’ after they won four Serie A titles in five years and thrashed Barcelona 4-0 in the 1994 European Cup Final.

That side then had all-time greats Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi.

London, Nov. 24: Manchester United football ace Cristiano Ronaldo has said that his mother will pick his girlfriends in future, to stop him making a hash of his love life.

The Manchester United star has bedded a host of beauties, but has not yet found his perfect girl.

According to the Daily Star, Cristiano, 23, has asked mum Dolores to run the rule over any future babes trying to snare him.

The Portuguese pin-up worships his mother, 52, who was fiercely opposed to him dating Spanish beauty Nereida Gallardo, 25.

Johannesburg  - Football's controlling body FIFA on Sunday said it was considering announcing the host of the World Cup earlier.

Addressing a press briefing on the state of transportation for the 2010 World Cup FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said that it had already been discussed at executive level.

"We are even considering announcing two World Cup hosts at the same time, that would give one of them at least 11 years to prepare."

Valcke said that the preparations for the World Cup in South Africa in 2010 had shown that seven years was the minimum needed to build the infrastructure necessary to host the World Cup.

London, Nov 23 : French international footballer William Gallas has in his autobiography revealed how some of football’s biggest stars relieve their sexual frustrations in the team shower.

Gallas, 31, who on November 22 was stripped of the team captaincy for exposing backstage bust-ups and slagging off team-mates, described how players pleasured themselves after the game.

According to him, footie stars refuse to have any kind of sexual activity with their WAGs before a game as “they won’t have the legs left” to win it, but after the match ends nothing stops them from relieving their pent-up aggression even if it’s in the shower.

“We pass so little time with our wives,” the Daily Star quoted him as saying.