By Paul Nicholson
January 23 – The pressure on Scottish club Rangers’ board to call an extraordinary general meeting is mounting, despite the board’s resistance to convene shareholders for a vote that would determine whether they maintained their positions or not.
By Mark Baber
January 23 – The Deloitte Money League for 2013/14 shows the richest clubs are getting richer – with the top 20 clubs seeing an increase in combined revenue of €6.2 billion in 2013/14, an increase of 14% on the previous year, but also indicates the advantages of a more equal distribution of wealth within a league. All 20 Premier League teams made the top 40 globally.
January 23 – A report titled The Odds of Match Fixing – Facts & figures on the integrity risks of certain sports bets by Professor Dr Ben Van Rompuy of the ASSER International Sports Law Centre draws a number of conclusions that blow away some of the myths around conventionally held thinking on match-fixing.
By Samindra Kunti
January 23 – The Brazilian FA, the CBF, has presented new regulations for 2015 with the threefold aim to regulate and bring discipline to Brazil’s domestic football finances and create more transparency.
January 23 – Scottish giants Rangers have organised a tribute match for their former Dutch international Fernando Ricksen at Ibrox this Sunday. Ricksen was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 2013. He played for the club for six years between 2000 and 2006 – a golden time for the club that is currently embroiled in the bitterest of boardroom struggles for control.
By Mark Baber
January 22 – The dispute between the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) and Football Kenya Federation (FKL) over the number of teams in Kenya’s top division and the relationship between the two bodies looks close to resolution with reports of a task force set up to take matters forward.
January 22 – Already buffeted by allegations by some participants of poor organisation, stand-in Africa Cup of Nations hosts Equatorial Guinea have now been rocked by clashes between fans and police.
January 22 – North Korea have withdrawn from a friendly tournament in Thailand next month following the humiliation of their early Asian Cup exit in Australia, according to Thai authorities.
By Andrew Warshaw in Brussels
January 21 – Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the Chilean who ran FIFA’s technical inspection team that examined the credentials of all 2018 and 2022 World Cup candidates, says he will press for the finals to be increased from 32 to 36 teams as part of his presidential election manifesto – if he decides to run.
By Mark Baber
January 21 – Claims that members of the ISIS/ISIL group in Iraq have executed 13 teenagers in Mosul for watching the Iraq v Jordan football match have spread via internet publications, the newspapers and social media.
January 21 – Beach Soccer fever is building across the CONCACAF region. With a record number of 16 nations heading to El Salvador for the regional championship in March and a Beach Soccer World Cup qualification place at stake, the confederation has unveiled its tournament logo and announced January 27 as the date for the draw.
January 21 – The Dutch football association (KNVB) is opening an investigation and calling for a criminal probe into detailed allegations published of alleged fixing of two matches in the top-tier Eredivisie.
January 21 – Bayern Munich have returned from a training camp in the Middle East to face a barrage of criticism over a friendly played in Saudi Arabia, with politicians and fans claiming the club had ignored the issue of human rights in the country.
By Paul Nicholson
January 21 – The pressure on the Russian Football Union (RFU) to pay its Italian head coach and team manager, Fabio Capello and Oreste Cinquini, has been mounting with criticism of the RFU coming from inside Russia from sports minister Vitaly Mutko and outside from UEFA president Michel Platini.
January 20 – Qatar’s disastrous Asian Cup campaign is exactly the opposite of what they expected both in terms of maintaining progress on the field and also in sending out a message to those who oppose the World Cup going to the Gulf state in 2022.