By Paul Nicholson
October 5 – “Reform or die, and reform had better happen sooner rather than later,” was the unequivocal, if not evangelical, message from Emanuel Medeiros, CEO of ICSS EUROPE, at the Leaders in Sport conference in London.
October 4 – The Belgian FA has launched an inquiry into allegations that several players in the country’s top league bet on their own matches.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 30 – Issa Hayatou (pictured), the all-powerful, old-school and often controversial ruler of African football who was in temporary charge of FIFA until the election of Gianni Infantino, has won another significant victory in his bid to retain control of the region he has run for the last 28 years.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 29 – Israel is trying to block moves to suspend five Israeli league teams controversially situated in the occupied West Bank, according to local reports.
September 29 – The Association of Football Agents has called for a total reform of the current system in order to tighten it up and make it “globally enforceable” following the revelations in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that have rocked the English game.
By Paul Nicholson
September 28 – The CIES Football Observatory has dug deeper into its transfer spend data of big-5 league clubs to examine where the money is being spent and how far down the football chain it is reaching. The answer is that probably not as far as clubs and leagues would like to pretend.
September 28 – English football’s League Managers Association (LMA) has been quick to react to sensational newspaper claims that a raft of its members have been guilty of taking bungs.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 28 – The good news is that he left with a 100% record. The bad news is that it comprised one solitary game in a reign that lasted just 67 days, the shortest in history.
September 27 – England’s new manager Sam Allardyce has been caught up in a newspaper sting which threatens his position just weeks into the job and which could potentially plunge the reputation of the national team, desperate to get back on an even keel following the debacle Euro 2016, back into crisis.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 23 – Doubts have been raised over whether FIFA’s new audit and compliance chief Tomaz Vesel is eligible for the job and whether FIFA president Gianni Infantino may have worked behind the scenes to manoeuvre the Slovenian into the role vacated in May by Domenico Scala.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 22 – New UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin, in the job for a matter of days, has unwittingly been dragged into a dispute over whether his predecessor Michel Platini is to receive a special financial handout despite his presidential term being cut short by his FIFA ban.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 19 – Hans-Joachim Eckert, FIFA’s chief ethics judge whose sanctions have ended the careers of a spate of high-ranking powerbrokers including Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, says he never realised how many cases he would have to handle when he first took on the job.
September 19 – Francois Carrard (pictured), the former Olympic supremo who led the team that drafted FIFA’s much-trumpeted governance proposals, says international sport is now “in crisis and must reform itself.”
September 19 – The European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL), furious at the lack of consultancy by UEFA over recent changes in the qualification rules for European club competitions, has called for global standards on good governance.
September 19 – Here we go again. Jose Mourinho blaming everyone but himself when things don’t go according to plan.