By Paul Nicholson
September 3 – Saudi Arabia’s ambition to hold the presidency of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has seen a second Saudi declare he will run in the presidential election next year.
October 3 – Africa’s football chief Ahmad Ahmad is reported to have promised Cameroon’s president Paul Biya that CAF has “never thought about” stripping the country of hosting rights for next year’s African Cup of Nations.
October 3 – Former Romanian striker Adrian Mutu has been ordered to pay Chelsea £15.2 million after losing an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, a landmark sum as the highest compensation figure ever set by FIFA in such cases. It is also an important judgement for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), endorsing its position as sport’s independent judicial process.
October 3 – After a succession of twists and turns, Peru captain Paolo Guerrero has lost his final attempt to get his 14-month ban for a doping offence permanently lifted.
Like UEFA president Alexander Ceferin or not, he has shown a steady hand running UEFA since he took over from – who was it again? Time flies, doesn’t it… The ‘man who came in from the nowhere’ and took charge of Europe’s football confederation has been accused of a lot of things since he took office. Most of them have had about as much basis as a Döner Kebab without lamb and onion.
October 3 – OTT streaming service Eleven Sports has challenged the English FA’s ban on the broadcast of live football matches on Saturdays between 2.45pm and 5.15pm by showing live coverage of Barcelona’s match against Athletic Bilbao last weekend.
October 3 – One of the best-known club names in US football, the Tampa Bay Rowdies, who boasted English legend Rodney Marsh and Brazil’s Mirandinha on their roster in the late 1970s, have been sold to the Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball team.
October 3 – Police in Las Vegas have re-opened a rape investigation into Cristiano Ronaldo after his accuser claimed she was breaking a non-disclosure agreement.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 2 – With a sense of inevitability, Turkey’s media have reacted furiously to last week’s failure to land the 2024 European Championships, taking particular aim at UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin.
October 2 – The long and often controversial footballing dynasty of the Lowy family in Australia is effectively over following the endorsement of widespread governance reforms that ended a two-year power struggle and even threatened the country’s FIFA membership.
October 2 – Despite resisting the idea in the past over misplaced beliefs that they could lose their independence within FIFA, Britain’s four football associations have agreed to allow a combined women’s team to try to qualify for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
October 2 – Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian president and owner of AC Milan, is back in football club ownership having bought Serie C club Monza.
October 2 – FIFA has once again stepped into the internal power struggle in Sierra Leone by calling on the government to allow national FA president, Isha Johansen (pictured left), back into the organisation’s headquarters.
October 2 – The Danish Football Association and the country’s players’ union have reached a new collective pay agreement which means the country will no longer have to call on part-timers for international fixtures.
October 2 – The Canadian Premier League (CPL), which is scheduled to kick off its inaugural season in 2019, has signed a long-term deal with Italian apparel company Macron.