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The US market is not exactly enthralled with the prospect of another foreign football circus passing through town as they see plenty of them already. Mike Woitalla reports from the land of opportunity

Forgive us if the prospect of English Premier League games in the United States didn’t get us all giddy. We’ve got so much soccer here already that a couple more games just wouldn’t be a very big deal. In 2007, the USA hosted more than 60 matches between foreign clubs. Include games that pitted visiting clubs against American teams and the figure passes 100. Besides the touring clubs, 40 national-team matches – not including the USA’s own 12 games – took place on our soil in 2007. And that’s not counting when Haiti, Fiji and China played against club teams.

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Paul Joyce reports on Germany's reaction to the Game 39 proposals

Support for Richard Scudamore’s 39th step has been non-existent in the German media. “Why do they still bother playing in England at all?” asked the left-wing newspaper Taz. “They may as well sell the whole circus to south-east Asia and put up giant screens in English stadiums.” The Berlin-based daily Der Tagesspiegel saw the Premier League’s expansionism as part of a post-Empire identity crisis: “While many Englishmen view this internationalisation as a stigma, they profit from it financially and it forms the basis of their sporting success. And the English are proud of this success.”

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The Premier League is taking itself too seriously according to the Spanish media, reports Phil Ball

Official Spanish response to the 39th game has been muted, to say the least. This may be due to several factors, but chief among them is that Angel Villar, the immovable president of the Spanish Federation for the past 20 years, has other more urgent things on his plate, such as the hostility of FIFA, rival gangs of candidates for his job, and all manner of accusations ranging from corruption to the showing of favouritism to his much loved Athletic Bilbao.

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Andy Brassell looks at the fallout in Portugal four years after they hosted the European Championship

Fans may complain that the Swiss and Austrian stadiums to be used in Euro 2008 may be a little on the small side, with only those in Basel and Vienna having room for significantly more than 30,000 spectators. And you can imagine by how much those dissenting voices would have been amplified had England, or indeed any of the home nations, managed to qualify for the finals. However, there is at least little doubt over the sustainability of the grounds post-tournament.

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Bayern Munich will have a new coach next season. For now, everyone is happy. But, as Karsten Blaas reports, the club’s relations with Jürgen Klinsmann haven’t always been cordial

Bayern Munich are always big news in Germany. Thanks to Franz Beckenbauer’s and Oliver Kahn’s womanising, Mario Basler’s drinking and Stefan Effenberg’s obnoxiousness, the club did their best to earn the nickname FC Hollywood. But when they announced that Jürgen Klinsmann would be their new coach – a two-year contract starts in July – the public response verged on the lunatic, even by Bayern standards. Half-a-dozen TV stations rescheduled programmes in order to cover the press conference and the broadsheets commented in their politics sections. Even chancellor Angela Merkel stated how happy she was about the return of the prodigal son.

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