Hamburg - Zenit St Petersburg and Serie A giants Juventus played out a scoreless draw in a Champions League Group H encounter Tuesday.

Juventus, already qualified thanks to back-to-back wins against Real Madrid, dominated possession at the Petrovsky stadium in St Petersburg, but Zenit came closest to scoring when Pavel Pogrebnyak saw his long-range shot come back off a post.

Danny, who earlier saw a goalbound shot blocked, almost snatched victory and all three points for the home side close to the end by his shot went narrowly wide.

Hamburg  - The German Bundesliga is making more money from jersey sponsorship than another other football league in Europe, the European Jersey Report
2008/09 survey carried by the market research group Sport und Markt and released Tuesday has revealed.

The 18 clubs in Germany's top flight reaped a total of 102.9 million euros (130.5 million dollars) for the current season from jersey sponsorship, the first time the Bundesliga has broken through the 100-million-euro barrier.

Johannesburg  - The South African Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the 2010 World Cup said Tuesday that they were happy with arrangements for both the World Cup and next year's Confederations Cup.

Addressing a media briefing during a LOC board meeting the LOC CEO Danny Jordaan said that they were happy with the way things are going.

"Since ticket sales started for the Confederations Cup on the weekend, we have already had 30,000 hits on the website. It is too early to say how the sales are going at other outlets, but we are hoping the stadiums will be full."

Jordaan said that the Board had approved a budget of 4.018 billion Rand (386.5 million dollars) for the two tournaments.

Zagreb- Branko Ivankovic has quit as coach of quit Croatian football champions Dinamo Zagreb, two days before a big UEFA Cup game against Spartak Moscow, the club said on Tuesday.

"We talked daily and decided that the path we were heading is not good so we decided mutually to go separate ways. We just weren't happy - neither the club nor the coach," Dinamo's sport director Zoran Mamic told journalists in Zagreb.

Munich - Germany captain Michael Ballack has defended his recent criticism on coach Joachim Loew, naming it a wakeup call.

"Sometimes you have to go public deliberately in order to shake
things up. There were a few irritations during and after the European
championships," Ballack told German pay-TV network Premiere ahead of
the European Champions League match of his club Chelsea at Girondins
Bordeaux on Wednesday.

Ballack said "you can't discuss everything internally," insisted he
"issued his opinion in decent way" and said "I didn't want to attack
anyone."

Zurich- The global television rights sale for the 2010 football World Cup has been completed ahead of schedule with a deal in Nigeria, the governing body FIFA said on Wednesday.

FIFA said in a statement that a contract with the Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON) will ensure free-to-air TV coverage and radio broadcasts of all 64 World Cup games in South Africa.

World Cup organizing committee chief Danny Jordaan welcomed the announcement as "another major milestone" which was completed "well ahead of schedule.