June 9 – Chinese company Yingli, winner of the NetEase ‘Best Sports Marketing Award’ for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, will be bringing solar energy to the world stage again, powering the Arena Pernambuco and Maracanã Stadium in Brazil.
There was good news and bad news for European club football in the financial story of the 2012-13 season, as compiled by professional services firm Deloitte in its latest Annual Review of Football Finance.
The good news is that, whether as a consequence of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) initiative or for some other reason, top-tier clubs in the five big west European football markets of England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, do seem to be managing their financial affairs more sustainably.
By Markus Hausmann
June 7 – The usually suave and always immaculately behaved German football legend, Franz Beckenbauer, had a few choice words on offer when asked about the present craze about Qatar’s alleged World Cup Bid irregularities this week in Munich.
By David Owen
June 6 – One solitary Championship club managed to make an operating profit in the 2012-13 season, as the second tier of English football faces crunch-time in its efforts to improve the state of club finances. Lancashire seaside team Blackpool were the odd ones out, as its 23 rivals contributed to aggregate operating losses of £241 million.
June 7 – UEFA’s pledge to crack down on clubs who fail to meet financial fair play regulations has snared its latest victim with Serbia’s Red Star Belgrade banned from next season’s Champions League for failing to pay their debts.
By Mark Baber
June 6 – The AIFF, which turned down the appeals of four clubs against being barred from next season’s I-League, has come under attack for failing to meet its own criteria.
There is nothing like a western-orchestrated attack on one of its member federations to put Asian football’s nose out of joint and provoke a strong response.
Over the past few days, both the head of the Asian Football Confederation, Sheikh Salman Ebrahim El Khalifa, and Sheikh Ahmad Fahad Al-Sabah, Asia’s Olympic supremo, have joined forces to roundly condemn the corruption allegations being hurled at Qatar over its 2022 World Cup bid.
June 6 – A leading hacker group is preparing a cyber-attack on corporate sponsors of the World Cup in Brazil to protest the lavish spending on the World Cup, according to sources close to the group.
By Mark Baber
June 6 – Hangzhou-based e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd announced Thursday that it is taking a 50% stake in Guangzhou Evergrande for 1.2 billion yuan ($192 million). The valuation of $284 million would put Evergrande into 20th place in the latest (2013) Forbes List of the World’s Most Valuable Clubs.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – In a move that seems bound to be viewed as highly provocative by FIFA and UEFA, Ukraine’s Crimean-based clubs have changed their names in a bid to join the Russian league following the annexation of the peninsula by Russian authorities.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
June 6 – Polish football club Lech Poznan has announced the signing of a new technical sponsorship deal with Nike. The US brand will replace Puma as the appareil partner in the 2014/2015 season.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 8 – Asia’s top Olympic official has waded into the latest corruption claims over Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid by blasting the allegations as being “racist” towards Arabs in general.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – FIFA president Sepp Blatter has sidestepped calls for a revote on the 2022 World Cup, insisting that no decision should be taken until FIFA’s ethics committee investigator, Michel Garcia, completes his probe of Qatar’s winning bid and the entire 2018 and 2022 process.
By David Owen
June 5 – Bayern Munich have retained their status as the club supplying most players for the 2014 FIFA World Cup now that the provisional squads have been trimmed to final squads of 23 players per country.
June 5 – Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Scudamore, is to undergo heart surgery next week, Scudamore informed member clubs at the league’s annual meeting today.