December 6 – Amid increasing security challenges facing host and bidding nations, a leading expert from the International Centre for Sport Security has highlighted the need for enhanced international collaboration and information-sharing at global level.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – Some will mourn his departure, others will rejoice. Sepp Blatter has finally lost his bid to clear his name over ethics violations after the Court of Arbitration for Sport today upheld the former FIFA president’s six-year ban from the game.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – Ray Whelan (pictured), the British consultant for Match Services, FIFA’s service provider for accommodation, ticketing and IT solutions who was arrested and detained in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup after being wrongly accused of selling VIP tickets at inflated prices, has broken his long silence over his ordeal by accusing Brazilian authorities of attempting to stage a “TV reality show.”
By Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – The “unwarranted criminal compliant” brought by Brazilian authorities during the latter stages of the 2014 World Cup against British ticket and hospitality consultant Ray Whelan has “officially closed in its entirety” according to his employers.
December 5 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is to set up a permanent whistleblower function as part of a new integrity policy catchlined ‘Do the right thing’.The initiative will see the AFC take a significant lead in the battle against match-fixing in a period when some other confederations have taken a deliberate step back from funding their efforts in this area.
By Samindra Kunti
December 5 – France’s Paris Saint-Germain will open a football academy in Indonesia in co-operation with local club Bali United. Bali will run the academy and tire maker Multistrada Arah Sarana will be the main sponsor.
By Andrew Warshaw
As if he didn’t have enough problems trying to defend the inconsistent displays of his Manchester United team, Jose Mourinho is now facing calls for an investigation into his tax affairs after leaked documents to a group of European media outlets suggested that he and other leading figures – most notably Christiano Ronaldo –made transactions that could be construed as tax avoidance.
December 5 – Completion of the sale of Serie A side AC Milan by Silvio Berlusconi to the Chinese investors now looks certain not to be completed on December 13, and could be pushed back to the end of February 2017 as the Chinese investors wait for government authorisation for the release of their money.
December 5 – Goalkeepers, often the old wise heads of top league teams, appear to be getting younger. Of four players under the age of 20 who have played every minute of every league match so far this season in the top divisions of 31 European leagues, three are goalkeepers.
By Paul Nicholson in Abu Dhabi
December 2 – A sparkling awards evening at the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, broadcast live on television, saw the UAE’s star attacking midfielder Omar Abdulrahman win the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Player of the Year award, while Australia’s Caitlin Foord won the women’s award. The Asian International Player of the Year went to Japan and Leicester’s Shinji Okazaki.
December 2 – The president of the German Football Federation (DFB), Reinhardt Grindel (pictured), says it is time to do away with the Confederations Cup, the traditional World Cup warm-up tournament, to ease fixture congestion and allow elite players to have a decent rest the summer before the World Cup itself.
December 2 – The UEFA executive committee holds its final meeting of the year next Friday and is scheduled to address European football’s most burning issue: the proposed new Champions league format.
By Samindra Kunti
December 2 – Dutch club Feyenoord has unveiled ambitious plans for a new stadium, part of a larger Feyenoord City campus in the south of Rotterdam. The future venue has a projected price tag of €400 million.
December 2 – The 55-player shortlist for the FIFA/FIFpro world eleven for 2016, to be announced in early January at a gala ceremony in Zurich, is as expected dominated by Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich players with England captain Wayne Rooney left off the list for the first time in the award’s history.
December 2 – British football’s child abuse scandal has taken another unsavoury twist with reports that a former Chelsea player was paid £50,000 by the Premier League club not to go public with allegations that he was sexually abused by the club’s former chief scout Eddie Heath.