WOMEN'S WORLD CUP SOCCER United States' bid ahead of the game

Thursday is the deadline for other countries to submit bids.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The United States should know by the end of this week whether it has any competition to host this year's Women's World Cup.
FIFA, soccer's governing body, set a Thursday deadline for other countries to submit bids.
The U.S. Soccer Federation is more than a week ahead of all others. It sent an amended plan to host the tournament to FIFA by e-mail on Friday, three days after an initial American presentation was made in Zurich, Switzerland.
"It is being reviewed and that is taking its normal course," FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said Monday.
Site change
The 16-nation tournament originally was scheduled to be played in China from Sept. 23 to Oct. 11, but FIFA's executive committee decided May 3 to move the quadrennial championship because of SARS.
The Americans consider themselves the front-runners, but want to make sure they don't lose money.
"They wanted more details on things like budgets," USSF president Bob Contiguglia said. "The list of requirements is probably 60 or 70 items long. Basically, we're responding to each of those items. There are a lot of details ranging from local transportation, visas, hotel arrangements."
Australia, Italy and Sweden expressed interest to be hosts to FIFA last week, Herren said. They were provided with the specifications and were told to make formal bids by Thursday if they remain interested. The final decision will be made either by FIFA's executive committee or emergency committee.
"We would like to have a decision as quickly as possible, hopefully by the end of the month," Herren said.
China was host of the first Women's World Cup in 1991 and Sweden was the site four years later. The United States was host to the highly successful 1999 tournament, beating China on penalty kicks in the final before 90,125 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.