By Andrew Warshaw
September 28 – The search for a suitable venue for Malaysia’s Asian Cup qualifier against North Korea has intensified following the Malaysian government’s imposition of a travel ban that has thrown more doubt on the controversial fixture.
September 28 – There are all kinds of football chants directed at away supporters – but fans of Apoel Nicosia this week opted to denounce their British colonial past when Tottenham Hotspur came to town in the Champions League.
September 28 – Organisers of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar are under fresh scrutiny over their treatment of migrant workers despite insisting for months that much work is being done to improve standards.
September 28 – A North Korean player on Perugia’s books has been barred from appearing on Italian TV – by the authorities in his own country.
September 28 – The former Russian owner of Swiss club FC Neuchâtel Xamax, Bulat Chagaev, has been handed a suspended jail term in absentia for attempted fraud and a raft of other charges.
By Paul Nicholson
September 27 – The English FA, recovering from the scandals surrounding the sacking of women’s national team coach Mark Sampson, has positive news for the women’s game with the announcement of a restructuring and expansion of the elite women’s game in the country.
September 27 – Morocco have reportedly moved into pole position to take over from Kenya as hosts of the 2018 African Nations Championship (CHAN), the regional tournament for domestically based players.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 27 – FIFA’s two former ethics chiefs, sacked last May during a purge of senior governance watchdogs, have made a strong appeal before the Council of Europe for the organisation’s supervisory bodies to be “totally independent” of its executive.
September 27 – The Premier League has sold more than 2.2 million tickets in the first six rounds of the season. Just 124,360 seats have gone unfilled, the majority of them due to stadium capacity restrictions.
By Mark Baber
September 27 – Football is due to return to Uruguay this weekend after an incident at a youth match involving the beating of two referees led to the suspension of all games on Sunday.
September 27 – A special European parliamentary group set up to look into tax evasion in football has been given a worrying overview of the scale of the problem.
By Samindra Kunti
September 27 – India has made a formal bid to host the 2019 U-20 World Cup, confirmed All India Football Federation (AIFF) president Praful Patel (pictured). Early next month India and the USA will kick off the U-17 World Cup, the first major international football tournament to be staged on Indian soil.
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.