By Mark Baber
September 26 – The draw for the 2017 Gulf Cup in Qatar was held in Doha yesterday, but without the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain who boycotted the ceremony. The three nations are attempting to isolate Qatar politically and commercially, a strategy that has spilled over into football.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 26 – Having only recently been elected as head of the European Club Association, the reputation of Andrea Agnelli has taken an immediate and somewhat embarrassing turn for the worse with the Juventus boss banned for a year by Italy’s soccer federation (FIGC) for his alleged role in the sale of match tickets to the club’s ultras fans.
By Ben Pilbrow and Annemaree McDonough
Football has often been described as the beautiful game, but never the beautiful business. Regularly tainted by allegations of corruption and shady-dealing, the importance of regulation in the sport increases in line with the flow of money into it. Between 1 October 2015 and 1 February 2016, intermediaries and agents received an estimated £46,582,843 from Premier League clubs alone.
September 26 – Possession stats have become a staple of the TV presentation package and an indication of how games are progressing – generally winning teams have the majority of possession. Celtic top a ranking of European clubs this season, with a thumping 70.8% of ball possession.
September 26 – Shanghai SIPG coach Andre Villas-Boas has been fined for his outburst following the recent Asian Champions League quarterfinal tie against Guangzhou Evergrande.
September 26 – Championship club Nottingham Forest have signed a one-year partnership with vitamins and supplements manufacturer Healthspan.
September 26 – CONCACAF has set up a Disaster Evaluation Taskforce to assess the impact of the natural disasters that have devastated the region in recent weeks.
September 26 – American second tier league the USL has named SCG Fields as the Official Field Builder. SCG will be an official supplier for the United Soccer League, USL’s Division III, the Premier Development League (PDL) and the Super Y League.
September 21 – Not before time, FIFA is set to back down and lift its ban on British national teams displaying the poppy symbols on shirts and armbands to honour the war dead of World War 1 and all conflicts since.
September 25 – The chaos of Sierra Leone took another political twist at the end of last week when the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) banned 19 officials from football activity in what was a response to the previous day’s indictment of Sierra Leone FA president Isha Johansen (pictured) on six corruption charges by the country’s anti-corruption commission.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 25 – After weeks of deliberation and speculation, Kenya has been stripped of the right to host the 2018 African Nations Championship (CHAN) following last weekend’s Confederation of African Football (CAF) executive committee meeting in Accra led by CAF leader Ahmad Ahmad.
September 25 – UEFA has wasted no time securing its first media deals for its newly announced Nations League competition with China’s Super Sports Media stepping up to acquire exclusive digital media rights to the competition in China for the 2018-19 and 2020-21 editions of the competition.
September 25 – Hassan Al Thawadi (pictured), the public face of the Qatar World Cup, has made his latest defence of the Gulf state’s credentials – again denouncing the “negative headlines” about its right to stage the 2022 event despite the fact that it will be the first hosts to have never previously qualified for the finals.
By Samindra Kunti
September 25 – The Argentinean national women’s team has gone on strike, citing structural problems and a lack of basic resources to properly train and play matches. The strike is an embarrassment for the newly formed AFA management team which has only recently taken control of the federation after a FIFA normalisation committee had been parachuted in to run football in the country.
September 25 – With Europe’s giant clubs setting up academies, coaching schools and grassroots initiative across China, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) has stepped in to bring some kind of order to the chaos.