June 18 – Liverpool’s bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games utilises both its Premier League club stadiums as venues, with Everton’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock being the proposed centrepiece for the Games.
By Samindra Kunti in St Petersburg
June 17 – Russia and New Zealand open the 2017 Confederations Cup, the warm-up tournament for the World Cup in 2018. It is also a gauge of where are Russia on the playing side with an expectant country putting pressure on coach Stanislav Cherchesov to deliver on home soil. Germany, Portugal and Chile begin the tournament as favorites.
By Samindra Kunti in St Petersburg, Russia
June 16 – With the Confederations Cup set to kick off tomorrow with hosts Russia facing New Zealand in the newly completed Kreztovsky stadium in St Petersburg, CEO of the Local Organising Committee Alexei Sorokin said they could not find corroboration of the “alarming” allegations made in the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report into construction workers’ conditions at World Cup stadium sites. Meanwhile, stadia are slowing filling though there are still 7,000 tickets for the opening game.
By Mark Baber
June 16 – Jorge Luis Arzuaga (pictured), an Argentine national and former managing director at Swiss bankers Julius Baer, pled guilty to money laundering conspiracy in the Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, admitting to arranging transfers of over $25 million in bribes and kickbacks from 2010 to 2015.
June 15 – Premier League clubs are expected to break the £1 billion spend mark on transfers this summer, but is this money well spent? New research suggests that last summer the savviest clubs were Middlesbrough and Stoke City, while the most profligate were Leicester City, and Manchester United and City on a cost-per-minute-played basis.
June 16 – Newly promoted Scottish Premier League side Hibernian have unveiled Eden Mill as a new back-of-shirt sponsor in a one-year deal.
By Mark Baber
June 16 – Despite optimistic noises from sections of the Kenyan press and Football Federation of Kenya officials and with a African football confederation (CAF) inspection team currently in the country to examine preparations, Kenya’s hosting of CHAN 2018 is in peril due to delays in preparing adequate host stadiums.
June 16 – Parc Olympique Lyonnais stadium has upgraded to next-generation LED lighting using the Philips ArenaVision LED pitch lighting system. It is the first French stradium to implement the solution which is being hailed as a breakthough for stadium entertainment and provides a greater flexibility for mix-used stadium events.
June 16 – Save the Dream and iCoachKids are partnering with the Qatari-based Save the Dream helping produce coaching educational materials on topics such as intercultural dialogue, gender, child protection and integrity for iCoachKids projects.
By Paul Nicholson
June 15 – FIFA has re-inforced a three-stage process that will ultimately give referees at the Confederations Cup in Russia the power to abandon games if discriminatory behaviour by fans gets out of control. This follows a procedure first encouraged by UEFA in 2009 and re-iterated in 2013 following incidents in Italy and the comments of then FIFA president Sepp Blatter that fines were not sufficient to combat the issues.
By Samindra Kunti
June 15 – The French Football Federation (FFF) has announced the nine cities that will host the matches of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup after due consultation with FIFA. Lyon will host both the opening match and the final.
By Paul Nicholson
June 15 – Chinese clubs looking to buy overseas players face a new 100% tax rule on all new acquisitions. Super League clubs were officially informed of the new regulation yesterday, the Chinese transfer window opens on Monday (June 19).
June 15 – FIFA has defended another attack on its record of protecting construction workers building the 2018 World Cup stadia in Russia, saying that a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report is mis-representative of the situation.
June 15 – The Video Assistant Referee system (VAR) will be in use at the FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia as the trail of the system continues.
By Mark Baber
June 15 – Heather Rabbatts, the FA’s first female non-executive Director and Board member, announced that she is stepping down after over five years at The Football Association.