By The Associated Press

BERLIN – Uncertainty in front of the net never is a good thing. At the World Cup, it could send a team home quickly.

Mexico couldn’t be sure who would guard its goal today when it plays Iran in its first tournament game until veteran Oswaldo Sanchez returned from his father’s funeral. Sanchez came back Saturday and said he would, indeed, be in the lineup.

“I’m ready for the match tomorrow,” Sanchez said after the team’s workout at the Franken-Stadion. “I feel good. I’m happy, because we’re going to win tomorrow.”

Sanchez’s presence is significant because Jesus Corona, who practiced with the first team on Friday while Sanchez was traveling, has only six games of international experience.

“Sanchez looked very relaxed,” coach Ricardo Lavolpe said.

Before Mexico plays Iran, Serbia Montenegro faces the Netherlands in Leipzig. The night game has Angola against Portugal in Cologne.

Mexico is highly regarded, ranked fourth in the world, and has loads of experience. Iran also has some players who have been through the World Cup grind, including Ali Daei and Mehdi Mahdavikia, who led a 2-1 win over the United States at France 98.

The Iranians aren’t without turmoil, either. Coach Branko Ivankovic, a Croat, has vowed to resign after the tournament.

“I have faced unrelenting criticism in the media over tactics, choice of players, and everything else for over four years,” Ivankovic said. “Even if we qualify for the next phase, the attacks on me will continue. Enough is enough.”

In a group that also has Portugal, Iran’s odds of advancing are long. It must slow down the offensive threats of Mexico’s Jared Borgetti, Omar Bravo and Guillermo Franco. Daei thinks they will.

The Portugal-Angola game would seem to have elements of a grudge match. The last time Portugal and its former African colony Angola met, in Lisbon five years ago, the game was cut short with 20 minutes remaining because of rough play by the Angolans.

No one is expecting any such animosity this time.

“I think there’ll be a huge spirit of friendship between the players, the coaches and the fans,” said Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, a Brazilian. “It’s an important game for the Portuguese-speaking world. We’ll show the world an example of fraternity and tenderness.”

Togo’s coach quits over money

WANGEN, Germany – Something is undoing what tiny Togo built in its improbable run to the World Cup. That something is money.

The players want it, the national soccer federation says it doesn’t have it – and the coach just quit over it.

Pay disputes are nothing new to sports.

Millionaire basketballer Latrell Sprewell famously explained that he had to hold out for millions more because he had to feed his family. Wide receiver Terrell Owens’ implosion last year began when the Philadelphia Eagles refused to redo a contract worth nearly $50 million. And those are merely two examples.

Togo’s players aren’t asking for millions. The $200,000 they wanted for playing here would be a fortune in a coffee and yam growing West African country whose 5 million inhabitants earn on average $380 per year.

It’s not the first time a pay dispute has splintered a national soccer team. But this dispute couldn’t come at a worse time for Togo, which enters its first game Tuesday against South Korea as the lowest-ranked team in the 32-nation tournament.

Just a few days ago, Togolese players and soccer officials hopefully pronounced the issue resolved. Not so – at least not in the mind of German-born coach Otto Pfister, who stormed out of the team’s hotel late Friday night and vowed not to come back.

Pfister said he signed up as coach on the promise that players would receive bonuses. Now, he lamented to FIFAworldcup.com, his “life’s dream has been destroyed.”

Togo itself might feel the same.

Not even the team’s most ardent supporters have been able to travel to Germany, apparently because of visa problems.

The mood of despair hanging over the team’s training camp in this idyllic tourist spa town hardly resembled the jubilation when the Sparrow Hawks qualified for their first-ever World Cup last October after beating a string of more accomplished African sides.

Drums and dances were the order of the day. President Faure Gnassingbe threw a national party and invited the team to breakfast.

Team manager Gerson Kwadjo Dobou blamed players for making “excessive” demands.

“The problems were started by rumors in the team that once we reached the World Cup, we suddenly became rich,” he told a hastily convened news conference Saturday. “Togo is a small, poor country.”

The players, most of whom play for smaller European clubs, saw it differently.

“Till now we have had nothing,” said Yao Kaka Aziawonou, who plays with a Swiss team. “We did not touch a single cent.”

AP-ES-06-10-06 1541EDT