September 19 – Brazil kept up their Olympic momentum with Gold and Bronze medals in the Rio Paralympic football tournaments. Their success in the five-a-side final at the Olympic Tennis Centre was their fourth successive win.
September 19 – Premier League attendances for Round 5 slipped across the league with the overall percentage of stadia filled dropping to 93.93%, the lowest for the season so far.
September 19 – The European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL), furious at the lack of consultancy by UEFA over recent changes in the qualification rules for European club competitions, has called for global standards on good governance.
September 19 – Here we go again. Jose Mourinho blaming everyone but himself when things don’t go according to plan.
September 19 – Real Madrid vs Sporting was the most exciting match of last week’s Champions League fixtures, almost twice as exciting as the second placed match – Legia Warsaw vs Dortmund – where the fans perhaps became a little overheated as Dortmund (with a strong Polish support in Germany), hammered the Polish champions 6-0.
By David Owen
September 17 – PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have stepped into the hot-seat vacated by KPMG as statutory auditors of FIFA. The world football body announced that the Bureau of the FIFA Council had appointed PwC Switzerland to the role.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 16 – Gianni Infantino, back in the comfort of his own patch after attending the UEFA presidential election in Athens where Aleksander Ceferin was elected in succession to Michel Platini, has dismissed as “imagination and lies” any idea that he lobbied behind the scenes in favour of the previously little-known Slovenian who critics claim Infantino was keen to control.
By Paul Nicholson
September 16 – While UEFA’s executive committee were yesterday finding out that it was too late to change the new structure agreed for Champions League qualification that favours Europe’s big four leagues and their biggest clubs, a high level delegation from one of the biggest of those clubs, FC Barcelona, was meeting FIFA president Gianni Infantino at FIFA headquarters in Zurich.
Minutes after chairing his first executive committee meeting as the seventh president in UEFA’s 62-year history, a suitably attired Aleksander Ceferin approached a lift on the lower ground floor at the luxury resort complex where the organisation’s top brass had been staying.
September 16 – Gillette has upgraded its regional sponsorship of FC Barcelona to become a global partner in a new three-year deal.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 16 – The United Nations’ top sports expert believes the controversial treatment of migrant workers in Qatar may never have been highlighted globally had the 2022 World Cup not been handed to the Gulf state but still questions whether the tournament should be staged there.
September 16 – Chinese businessman Guochuan Lai has completed his £175 million acquisition of West Bromwich Albion following the deal being approved by the Premier League this week.
September 16 – German pay-TV sports network Sky Deutschland has announced it will add a new web channel that will focus on video content, skysport.de.
September 16 – With the Rio Paralympic Games in full swing, the Johan Cruyff Foundation has opened a Special Cruyff Court for blind and visually impaired people on the premises of Urece, an organisation that gives blind and partially sighted people the opportunity to play sports.
By Andrew Warshaw in Athens
September 15 – He said it would be his first priority as the voice of the disadvantaged. But UEFA’s new president, Alexander Ceferin, will almost certainly be unable to scrap controversial changes to the Champions League that have played into the hands of Europe’s most powerful clubs and infuriated major leagues who say they were not properly consulted.