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Andrew Warshaw: Punishments to Caribbean officials don’t add up

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Sepp Blatter has made much of the need to crack down on corruption following the highly publicised bribery scandal and a raft of other misdemeanours within his organisation. Yet there is mounting criticism of the token punishments handed out by FIFA’s Ethics Committee to those who either took or were offered bundles of cash back in May.

Just when FIFA could have made an example of the guilty Caribbean officials who attended the infamous Trinidad meeting,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Stadium mystery could have an ending even Agatha Christie could not have plotted

Mihir Bose

The debate about the future of the Olympic Stadium illustrates a very simple sporting truth about this country. The one sport that makes money is football, but only at the highest level.

All other sports, including lower league football, struggle. Any attempt to make money and market a sport other than football, particularly athletics, is extremely difficult and can result in failure.

The Government forgot this sporting truth and the result is that the future of the Olympic Stadium is uncertain and the taxpayer may end up paying for its maintenance.

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David Owen: Despite all the hard work, Wembley Stadium is still a huge financial burden on the FA

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The most telling information in the Football Association’s recently published 2010 annual report and financial statements comes on page 24 of the 42-page document.

This tells us that, for all the pain and hard work that went into driving up the body’s overall financial performance, stadium and non-FA event management remained heavily in loss – to the tune of £12.1 million ($18.9 million/€13.9 million) at the pre-tax level, against £15.6 million ($24.4 million/€ million) in 2009.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Sky may not be the limit with Murphy’s law

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Karen Murphy’s victory in the European Court over showing live matches in her pub without paying Sky’s charges should not be overestimated. It will have consequences, particularly in the lower reaches of the game, but it should not be seen as televised football’s equivalent of the Bosman ruling. It is not.

Bosman has proved such a far-reaching, even revolutionary, judgement, that its effects are still being felt more than a decade and a half later.

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David Owen: “There’s only one Karen Murphy”. Why it isn’t just English armchair football fans who should be chanting the pub landlady’s name this weekend

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The first thing to be said about this week’s European Court of Justice ruling – that promises, for a time, to open a path to cheaper live Premier League football for armchair fans in the UK – is that if this doesn’t make the European Union (EU) more popular in famously eurosceptic Britain, nothing will.

But the potential consequences for the future structure of the European game are just as fascinating.

Andrew Warshaw: Please sort out this Olympic Stadium saga before everyone gets fed up

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Please just sort it out. Sit round the table, thrash out a deal and stop the squabbling before everyone gets thoroughly fed up with the whole interminable saga.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Tottenham Hotspur’s refusal to pull out of the race to take over the Olympic Stadium after next summer’s Games, the entrenched positions of all parties has got to an embarrassing and, quite frankly, irritating stage.

How must the International Olympic Committee (IOC) be feeling when,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Segregating fans has helped foster climate of hatred

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English football fans are be capable of much humour, no little inventiveness and a warmth and goodness that can be truly uplifting, but the capacity for some fans to be vile should not be underestimated. Events at some recent matches have once again demonstrated that.

So during their Carling Cup encounter, Manchester United fans were taunted by chants from Leeds fans about the Munich air crash and United fans, in turn, retaliated with chants of Istanbul,

Andrew Warshaw: Restoring FIFA’s tattered reputation is a big ask of new communications chief De Gregorio

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It’s one thing spearheading FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s election manifesto against a single opponent who later pulls out anyway. It’s quite another taking on a sceptical global media to try to repair the organisation’s battered standing in the game.

That’s the task facing FIFA’s new communications chief Walter De Gregorio, who takes up his new post on October 1.

Given the need-to-know basis on which the FIFA communications policy has operated in the past,

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David Owen: Beckham to Paris? Oui, Oui oh Oui!

So David Beckham is wanted by Paris Saint-Germain, according to a BBC headline.

It is an arresting story, but would it make sense?

Well, yes, actually, I think it would – though the reasons have little to do with the former England captain’s capacity for delivering pinpoint crosses from the right touchline.

Columnists

David Gold: Rummenigge may have called a cease-fire with Blatter but he is still fighting war against international football

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Given how Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the legendary former Germany forward and chair of the European Clubs Association (ECA), had compared Sepp Blatter’s FIFA reign to Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship in Egypt and threatened to bring it to a similar end, there was surprise among the assembled journalists at the President Wilson hotel last week when he seemed to retreat from his battle lines.

Just a month ago, the 95-times capped Germany forward, when asked if Blatter was fit for the job of FIFA President,

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: After Bin Hammam’s race claim, Blatter needs to prove he really is a citizen of the world

Mihir Bose

Mohammed Bin Hammam may have been self-serving in accusing FIFA of racism and alleging that, had he been an European, he would not have suffered the punishment he has – banished for life from world football for having been found guilty of vote buying during the FIFA presidential race.

He could not have put it more clearly in a letter to Petrus Damaseb, the deputy chairman of the Ethics Committee: “Were I a European,

Andrew Warshaw: Sion’s case has potential to be as far reaching as Bosman

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Messy, sloppy, awkward, embarrassing. Just four of the adjectives that could be applied to the ongoing spat between Swiss club FC Sion and UEFA. Let’s add a fifth: dangerous.

Football fans at large may not be too interested in an argument involving a middle-ranked football club that has little or no international relevance outside its own country. But didn’t they say a similar thing about journeyman Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman all those years ago?

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: The rise of celebrity culture is changing the face of our beautiful game

Mihir Bose

The cult of the manager may have been developing since the 1960s, but football now faces a situation that not many could have imagined. This is the age of the manager as a celebrity, with his every action judged to be as important and worthy of highlight, at times even more so, than the players he manages.

This marks a fundamental change in the how the game is perceived. When Pelé described football as the beautiful game,

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David Gold: Will United sink or swim in partial flotation?

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After months of speculation, Manchester United has confirmed that it will make 25 to 30 per cent of the club’s shares available to investors in a partial flotation later this year on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

Once again it raises searching questions about the club’s owners, the Glazer family, who burdened the club with significant debts when taking it over in 2005, and as a result are reviled by the United supporters.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose: Money doesn’t always guarantee sporting success

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The beginning of the football season always turns to talk of money and how much clubs have spent on the transfer market.

Yet what this misses is the age-old truth that money does not buy sporting success. Spending money can keep the fans happy and raise their expectations for the season, but is no guarantee of silverware at the end of the season.

This is something that Manchester City fans might well discover this season as they finally strive to wrest back some glory from their more famous city rivals.