This Saturday sees the first leg of two of the European World Cup play-offs, determining what nations will claim the last sought-after tickets to South Africa this summer. The Republic of Ireland's hopes of qualifying suffered a massive blow after being drawn to face France in the play-offs. Country manager, Giovanni Trapattoni has openly criticized FIFA for seeding the play-offs, calling it the "death of football" while Manchester City keeper Shay Given, a little less dramatic, labelled it "disgusting", "crazy" and "totally unfair on the smaller nations". As Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Slovenia were all unseeded, it meant they could not play each other. To spice things up even further, these supposedly leaked letters between the French Department of Diplomatic Affairs and the Irish Consulate in Paris requesting a VIP box for the French president Nicolas Sarkozy for the Ireland v France game in Dublin this Saturday has been circulating the internet the last couple of days. Fake? Most probably, funny definitely!