UEFA marks the start of its 50th anniversary celebrations on Thursday by unveiling the outstanding European player of the last 50 years from a poll of seven million votes.

UEFA has already revealed that the winner will be Johan Cruyff of The Netherlands, Germany's Franz Beckenbauer or Zinedine Zidane of France.

European soccer's governing body, which was founded in 1954, has already unveiled the names of players ranked from 50 to 4 on the list, with striker Dutch striker Marco Van Basten just missing out on the final three in fourth place.

The announcement of the winner will be the highlight of the Golden Jubilee ceremony, which kicks off UEFA's 28th Congress on Thursday.

The following day there will be elections for the UEFA Executive Committee and for the four European places on the Executive Committee of FIFA, world soccer's governing body.

Ten candidates are standing for seven seats on the UEFA Executive and five candidates are in the race for the four seats on the FIFA Executive.

Delegates from all 52 of UEFA's national associations have gathered for the first UEFA Congress in Cyprus, whose own football association is celebrating its 70th anniversary.

HEALTHY FINANCES

As well as the elections, they will also hear that despite financial problems affecting many leading European clubs, UEFA's position is healthy with 807 million Swiss francs ($613.7 million) in the bank as at July 31, 2003.

Although that figure is down from the 868 million francs reported at the end of July 2002, a change in accountancy procedures and the fact that certain incomes were not due until August 2003 explains the difference.

The Congress begins on Thursday with a ceremony at which the best European player of the last half-century will be named following a public vote by more than 150,000 fans on the Internet, which produced more than seven million votes.

Keith Cooper, who has co-ordinated much of UEFA's Golden Jubilee celebrations explained:

"The mechanism devised was such that to cast your votes for a player in the 1990s or 1980s, you had to vote for players in the 1950s, 60s and 70s as well, to act as a guard against younger fans loading the voting for modern players. The system used has produced a very fair result."

While that vote has engaged tens of thousands of fans, the rather more restrained politicians of football governance will cast their own votes on Friday for the UEFA and FIFA seats.