By Jaroslaw Adamowski
January 17 – The municipal authorities of Kielce have decided to bail out troubled football club Korona Kielce with an allocation of PLN7.8 million (€1.9 million) from the city’s budget for 2015. The funds will allow the club to continue competing in the Ekstraklasa, the top tier of Poland’s professional football league, in the current season.
By David Owen
January 17 – FIFA has revealed that almost €40 million was paid to clubs under its inaugural Club Protection Programme (CPP) running from 1 September 2012 to 31 December 2014. All told, 126 cases were settled and €39.3 million paid out under the scheme, which compensates clubs when their players are injured on international duty.
So why is it that, with just under two weeks to go, it has not been possible to find a candidate who can seriously challenge Sepp Blatter? Jerome Champagne, after a year of campaigning, may now not even get on the ballot, Prince Ali cannot win his own Asian confederation and, as far as the candidacy of David Ginola is concerned that sounds like a nice bookmaker’s wheeze.
January 16 – Teams arriving for the Africa Cup of Nations which starts tomorrow in Equatorial Guinea have reportedly been suffering from a lack of hotel rooms and other facilities.
January 16 – The Asian Football Confederation says every effort is being made to avoid match-fixing at the Asian Cup.
By Mark Baber
January 16 – Ronaldo’s conquest of the Golden Ball, football’s top individual honour, will have added five to ten million euros to the value of his CR7 brand, probably taking his value over the 60 million euro mark, according to Professor Daniel Sá, author of a IPAM School of Marketing study.
January 16- European clubs look set to count the cost of losing vital players to the 30th African Nations Cup that starts tomorrow.
Figures released by the European Club Association shows that two thirds of the players involved come from European clubs.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 16 – It was always possible that a left-field candidate would put his name forward for FIFA president but few expected it to be a former left-sided international midfielder with little or no experience in football administration.
January 16 – FC Schalke 04 have agreed a partnership with South Korean tyre manufacturer Kumho Tyres until the end of the season 2016/2017 including an option for further cooperation.
January 16 – Italy’s Serie B and the Estonian Football Association (EJL) have moved to improve their betting fraud protection, signing up Sportradar to deliver packages of education and match monitoring.
January 16 – UEFA president Michel Platini’s idea of referees using white cards for sinbins has been supported by the organisation’s refereeing chief Pierluigi Collina (pictured) who says it will help prevent diving.
“He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them.” Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza, the 17th Century Dutch-Portuguese philosopher, was certainly ahead of his time. His inchoate views that there is no such thing as a providential God, only nature, which one day would form the basis of his far-sighted Theologico-Political Treatise (published anonymously) were so controversial he was formally excommunicated by the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam that had brought him up.
By Samindra Kunti
January 16 – Brazilian club Santos is facing a mutiny in its ranks after four players took the club to court over arrears for outstanding salaries and fees. The judicial trouble is hampering Santos’s preparations for the new domestic season which begins with the state leagues this month – Santos play in the Paulista.
By Alexander Krassimirov
January 15 – Bulgaria’s CSKA Sofia have opted to sign a kit deal with Italian firm Lotto instead of switching to US giant Nike. The new three-year contract with the Italian supplier starts next season and replacing another Italian company, Legea.
Not many people had expected that Team China would qualify for the second stage of the Asian Cup held in Australia, after just two group matches. On the contrary, before the tournament started, quite a few journalists who have covered the national team for a long period, were joking about coming back home after those two matches.