By Paul Nicholson
August 1 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has said that the 2018 World Cup will be played in 12 stadiums across 11 cities, and that there is no need to reduce the number of venues.
August 1 – Barcelona defender Gerard Pique says Luis Suarez will be more motivated than ever when he completes his four-month ban for biting at the World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 1 – The pressure on Manchester United to put in a strong season and get back to dominating the Premier League under new coach Louis van Gaal has been underlined with the revelation that the club must return to the Champions League before the end of the 2016-17 season or face the prospect of a 30% reduction in their world record £75 million-a-year kit deal with Adidas.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
August 1 – Moldovan businessman Valerii Moraru has acquired 94.72% of the shares in Romanian club Rapid Bucharest. The full cost of the club to Moraru has not been declared but it has been reported he paid between €2.7 million and €4 million for the 20% stake he purchased from Adrian Zamfir, one of the club’s former co-owners.
By Mark Baber
August 1 – Meeting in the House of Football, the Russian Football Union (RFU) decided on Thursday to allow Crimean football clubs to play Russian league football from next season.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 1 – Former US presidential candidate John McCain has added his voice to calls for Russia to be stripped of the 2018 World Cup finals because of the Malaysian Airlines disaster and Russian support for separatists in the east of Ukraine.
Paul Nicholson
August 1 – The Glazer family are selling just under 5% of their shareholding in Manchester United. The sale of the eight million shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) will realise about $150 million for the family.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 1 – An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone has led to the Seychelles forfeiting Saturday’s African Nations Cup qualifier rather than risk the disease spreading to the Indian Ocean island. Sierra Leone were due to travel to the Seychelles for a second-leg tie only for the game to be called off on the advice of the host authorities.
August 1 – The Asian Football Confederation has extended the domestic ban on nine Vietnamese players to confederation level for their role in the country’s match-fixing scandal. The chairman of the AFC Disciplinary Committee took the move following a request from Vietnam’s own national federation.
By David Owen
August 1 – Further details of alleged shortcomings at the Rio de Janeiro doping control laboratory whose accreditation was revoked last year by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), obliging FIFA to send blood and urine samples from the recent World Cup for analysis in Switzerland, have emerged in minutes of a WADA meeting in South Africa now available on the agency’s website.
July 31 – Honduras is to host the CONCACAF U17 boys championship in February next year. Meanwhile the confederation has announce that the crucial 2014 CONCACAF Women’s Championship, the regional qualifier for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada next year will be played in four host cities in the United States: Chicago, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 31 – Barcelona may have had one of their worst seasons in recent years by their own high standards – having not won a single trophy – but the Catalan giants have still managed to post record revenues and their second highest profit ever.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 31 – Organisers of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar have been quick to respond to the latest wave of criticism over the mistreatment of construction workers saying they are “actively looking into” the latest reports and are “heavily dismayed” at some of the claims.
By Mark Baber
July 31 – The High Court has rejected Arsenal’s appeal against a planning inspector’s decision against their proposal to increase the number of concerts held at the Emirates Stadium from three to six per year, rejecting Arsenal’s contention the inspector had not properly taking into account the benefits of the proposal and its overall accordance with the local area’s development plan.
By Paul Nicholson
July 31 – Fabio Capello committed his future to the Russian team through to the 2018 World Cup yesterday. There had been criticism internally of Russia’s failure to make it through the group stages of the Brazil World Cup, as well as of Capello’s reported $12 million salary.