By Paul Nicholson
May 13 – Anyone who thought Mike Ashley was going to take losing grip of his control of Scottish giant Rangers lieing down was mistaken. Ashley now wants another extraordinary general meeting, his £5 million loan back, and a full explanation of why the company was de-listed from the stock exchange.
May 13 – UEFA and the Local Organising Committee of EURO 2016 have announced ticket prices as cheap as €25 for next year’s tournament with the aim of making the matches accessible to all fans.
By Alexander Krassimirov
May 12 – The owner of Bulgaria’s Litex Lovech, Grisha Ganchev (pictured), is back in court charged with tax crimes alongside 10 others who together, says the public prosecutor, form part of a criminal organisation.
May 12 – Belgian football is coming to terms with the tragic death of a second footballer as a result of a cardiac arrest. Two weeks after 24-year-old Lokeren central defender Gregory Mertens died in hospital after collapsing as he played in a reserve game, lower-league fullback Tim Nicot, 23, of fourth-tier Wilrijk-Beerschot, suffered a similar fate on Friday.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 12 – The power struggle over who runs Spanish football is heading for the courtroom on Wednesday with an expected ruling over whether the proposed strike in protest at the new TV rights law is legal.
May 12 – The average age that young players are introduced into first team squads in Europe’s ‘Big 5’ leagues is lowest in France (23.66) but highest in Italy (25.5), according to latest research by the CIES Football Observatory.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 11 – China and India may be arguably the world’s two biggest untapped footballing markets but unless they solve the problem of match-fixing and betting fraud they will never catch up.
May 11 – The Caribbean Football Union’s senior club competition will go into its final round games in Trinidad, May 22-24. Three of the four qualifying teams will go into the June 1 draw for the 2015/2016 Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League.
May 9 – With the play-offs for promotion to the Scottish Premier League (SPL) beginning today, a row has broken out over ticket prices with both Rangers and Hibernian being disallowed from admitting season ticket holders without a fee.
By Alexander Krassimirov
May 8 – The largest shareholder in Bulgaria’s CSKA Sofia Ivaylo Madzhukov (pictured) has admitted that the club is still threatened with bankruptcy. The new investors, however, have said they will do everything possible to prevent it. It is not yet clear whether the club will be granted a license for next season, because of the huge tax debt it owes the National Revenue Agency.
May 8 – ‘Nice guys come last’, so the saying goes, but in UEFA’s world being a good corporate citizen wins your country an additional Europa League place.
By Mark Baber
May 8 – The crisis in Spanish football, which threatens to bring football to a halt in the country from May 16, has deepened with the player’s union (AFE) aligning itself with the federation (RFEF), calling for a strike to begin on May 16 – the Spanish league (LFP) has already declared strike action illegal.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 8 – Ray Whelan, the British director who was arrested and detained in Brazil after being wrongly accused of selling VIP World Cup tickets at inflated prices, is back working as a consultant for Match Services, FIFA’s official marketing partner, and is planning to write a book about the entire experience.
May 8 – Honduras have stepped up to host the second regional championship in the country in a year, with the CONCACAF Under-20 Women’s Championship 2015 this December. The championship will decide the three teams to qualify for the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Papua New Guinea 2016.
May 7 – Enfield Town, the tiny part-time club in the eighth tier of English football whose case against being docked three points for no other reason than being honest has made national headlines, will discover tomorrow whether they will be let off the sanction.