Soccer
<i> From Staff and Wire Reports</i>
Eight countries entered in the first stage of bidding for soccer’s 1998 World Cup finals before a midnight deadline Friday.
Five were former World Cup hosts--Brazil, Britain, Chile, France and Switzerland. Bids also were received from India, Morocco and Portugal.
Buffalo dropped its bid to become a World Cup soccer playoff site in 1994 because it does not have a proper stadium for the games and can’t afford to build one, organizers said.
