BARCELONA, Spain -- Romanian World Cup soccer star Gheorghe Hagi arrived in Barcelona on Thursday to undergo a medical check-up before signing an expected two-year contract with the Spanish champion.


For Hagi, 29, an attacking midfielder with a magical left foot, a deal with Barcelona would mean a return to Spanish football after two years in Italy.


He played two seasons with Barcelona's arch-rival Real Madrid before moving to Italian club Brescia in 1992.


Spanish newspapers have reported that Barcelona would pay Brescia 300 million pesetas ($2.4 million) for Hagi, one of the outstanding players in the World Cup finals in the United States.


Hagi's own fee is said to be around 125 million pesetas per season.


The Romanian indicated on arrival that his signing for Barcelona was not yet finally settled.


Club officials said the board was holding its annual meeting on Thursday night but it was not clear if any statement was expected.


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Midfielder Claudio Reyna, the youngest player on the U.S. World Cup team, was scheduled to leave for Germany on Thursday to sign with Bayer Leverkusen in the first division.


A U.S. soccer official said the basics to the deal had been agreed last Saturday. Reyna will join Thomas Dooley, a defender and midfielder on the U.S. team, who last month agreed to a two-year contract with Leverkusen.


Reyna, who turned 21 on Wednesday, has two goals in 17 appearances on the U.S. team but missed the World Cup after tearing his right hamstring in practice on June 8.


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Claudio Taffarel, hailed as a hero in Brazil's World Cup victory, says a real hero is the cab driver who returned his victory medal and $60,000 in cash.


A day after the goalkeeper survived a penalty-kick shootout against Italy, he left his passport and treasure in Juan Blanco's taxi.


"My feeling was, I got to give this back to this guy," Blanco, 32, said in a telephone interview Thursday night from his home in suburban Santa Ana, 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.


"When I talked to him," the Mexican-born cabbie said, "I said I thought twice about going back to Mexico. We were joking. But inside me it wasn't to do that."


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Brazil's government tax chief resigned Thursday in a dispute over the failure of the victorious Brazilian soccer squad to pay nearly $1 million of customs duties on excess luggage brought from the United States.


The dispute threatened to spoil the mood of euphoria that had greeted Brazil's fourth World Cup title.


Federal Revenue Secretary Osiris Lopes Filho told reporters he was quitting over "differences" with President Itamar Franco.


He was due to hand in his resignation letter later Thursday.


Lopes said the "last straw" had been the president's decision to overrule his order that 17 tons of luggage brought back from the United States by the Brazilian soccer delegation should be subject to normal Brazilian customs inspection and duties.


Brazilian newspapers ran front-page stories Thursday on how the players and soccer federation officials had refused late Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro to allow customs officials to inspect their luggage, which was carried in five trucks to their hotel.


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An appeals court upheld Thursday the prison sentence of Turkish soccer star Tanju Colak, effectively ending his sports career.


Colak, the leading scorer in European soccer in the 1987-88 season, will serve 22 months in prison and pay a fine of 772 million Turkish liras ($23,200) for his involvement in the smuggling of a luxury car.


Turkish law forbids anyone sentenced for certain crimes, including smuggling, from playing professional soccer.


Colak refused to make any comment. Colak starred for the Istanbul team Galatasaray in the late 1980s and for Fenerbahce in the early 1990s.


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Brazil moved up two places to take over as the top team in FIFA's monthly world rankings released Thursday, while Bulgaria, Sweden, Belgium and Saudi Arabia made some of the biggest jumps of the World Cup participants. (AP, Reuters)