By Andrew Warshaw
April 25 – Harold Mayne-Nicholls (pictured), who led the FIFA inspection team that evaluated the credentials of all 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding candidates, has had his ban from all football-related activities reduced on appeal from seven to three years – another blow to the supposed independent judgement of FIFA’s ethics chiefs.
April 25 – The lawmakers of world football, the International FA Board, have invited leagues and associations interested in running experiments with video replays to a first workshop on the ground-breaking innovation in Amsterdam next month.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 21 – Swiss authorities have enacted potentially ground-breaking new rules, dubbed by Swiss media ‘Lex FIFA’ (the FIFA Law), as part of an initiative to crack down on corruption in sport.
April 21 – FIFA should have acted quicker in raising the issue of Qatar’s treatment of migrant labourers working on 2022 World Cup sites, according to its head of corporate social responsibility.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 20 – Theo Zwanziger, the controversial former German FA boss and FIFA executive committee member, has won the legal case brought against him by the Qatar Football Association for describing the Gulf state’s right to host the 2022 World Cup as a “cancer on world football”.
April 19 – The US investigation into football corruption that rocked FIFA to its core has now apparently shifted focus away from football officials and deeper into the banks, broadcast and sponsorship markets that made the bribery and money laundering possible.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 18 – Sepp Blatter may still be banned from football for alleged ethics breaches but that doesn’t prevent the former FIFA president from speaking his mind in an unofficial capacity when invited to do so.
By Mark Baber
April 18 – FIFA are reportedly “reviewing” the circumstances in which David Beckham, Fabio Capello and others were involved in a football match held in Kuwait on December 18 in defiance of a FIFA ban on any sporting contact with the country. The game was played two months after FIFA imposed a ban on sporting contact with Kuwait under the slogan #wewillplay which was prominently displayed around the pitch and as a hashtag on Twitter.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 15 – FIFA must in future make human rights a priority when awarding countries the World Cup according to an independent report produced by a senior United Nations official commissioned four months ago by football’s world governing body as part of its reform programme.
April 11 – The English Football Association wants FIFA to investigate whether there are definitive long-term health hazards from too much heading of the ball.
When Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung received a message in spring 2015 that it would be receiving access to – as they say – some 11 million documents hacked out of Panamanian Law Firm Mossack Fonseca, the excitement was tremendous. One of Germany’s leading dailies was an odd target for whoever stole the documents from the large law firm in Panama, a solid US protectorate. The apparent logic was quickly established, considering that Mossack is a German national who chose to seek greener pastures in a land whose president had been kidnapped by the USA,
April 7 – Colombian match agent Miguel Trujillo is the latest official to have formal proceedings opened against him by FIFA’s ethics watchdog after pleading guilty last month in the United States to four counts of wrongdoing, including conspiracy to commit money-laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 7 – A member of the FIFA body responsible for rooting out corruption has himself resigned after being placed under investigation over his offshore business dealings exposed in the Panama Papers tax haven leak, heaping damage on the accountability and credibility at the heart of football’s world governing just when it is trying to restore its battered reputation.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 6 – New FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who came into office just six weeks ago vowing to clean up the discredited organisation, has himself been drawn into the corruption scandal that has brought down a raft of high-profile powerbrokers.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 6 – Greece has been given a 10-day ultimatum by FIFA to stop government interference in its footballing affairs but the threat of a worldwide ban from international competition still hangs over the country.