By Paul Nicholson
December 16 – It took a hat-trick from Cristiano Ronaldo to wake up the European football ‘world’ to FIFA’s often unloved Club World Cup in that region. The significant story of this competition, however, is perhaps not Real Madrid’s extra time win but that the European Champions were pushed by another team from Asia making a mark in world football.
By Samindra Kunti
December 19 – Didier Quillot is the executive director of the LFP, the body presiding over professional French football. In an exclusive interview with Insideworldfootball Quillot addressed the challenges Ligue 1 faces.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 19 – Danny Jordaan, the public face of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and head of the country’s national association (SAFA) has missed out on the same role with the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) after withdrawing from presidential elections before a vote was cast.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 19 – Former German football supremo Wolfgang Niersbach has conceded defeat by agreeing to step down from his senior posts at FIFA and UEFA after failing to win his appeal against his one-year ban.
December 19 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino still hopes to see video technology used at the 2018 World Cup in Russia if teething problems can be ironed out in time.
December 19 – When FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura (pictured right) visited Sierra Leone last month on a working trip that was partly to mediate in the ongoing dispute between the national association and the government over the way football there is run, she somewhat surprisingly suggested that the country bid for the under-17 women’s World Cup.
December 19 – Court papers filed by prosecutors in the US allege that an affiliate of a major broadcasting company in Latin America paid millions of dollars in bribes to obtain the rights for the next four World Cup tournaments in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
December 19 – Chinese brewer Tsingtao has renewed its sponsorship of the fast developing and increasingly commercial AFC Champions League for another four years, no figure was announced for the deal.
By Paul Nicholson
December 19 – The hunting down of Jack Warner by the US Department of Justice suffered a second setback in six months when a judgement at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, refused the US access to join the legal team making the case for his extradition from the island.
December 19 – Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF) has renewed telecoms giant Orange as a major sponsor of its competitions for another eight years. The deal has been finalised just a couple of weeks before the start of the Total Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Gabon in January.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 16 – When Aleksander Čeferin was campaigning to replace Michel Platini as UEFA president, he dismissed as “insulting” persistent reports that in exchange for their votes he had made a series of promises to the Nordic federations, not least that he would support a joint Nordic bid for the 2024 Euro finals.
December 16 – FIFA’s new video review system, championed by those who have long argued goalline technology alone does not go far enough, has not got off to the most auspicious of starts.
By David Owen
December 16 – It is a situation that encapsulates the globalisation of top-class football in the 21st century: the sale of Brazilian midfielders to China is promising to have a transformative effect on the financial performance of a West London club controlled by a Russian businessman.
December 16 – Instagram continues to be the social media growth engine for Premier League clubs with new followers up by 376,700 over the past week, a 40% increase on the 273,100 rise the previous week. In contrast week-on-week growth of Twitter followers and Facebook like were down across the league.
December 16 – Fan voting has opened for the CONCACAF annual awards, the fourth time the awards have been held.