UEFA think-tank demands end to TPO and regulation of agents

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By Paul Nicholson
March 11 – The UEFA Professional Football Strategy Council (PFSC), meeting at UEFA HQ in Nyon yesterday, have slammed the percentage of agent commissions being paid and demanded regulation in the agency marketplace. The PFSC also threatened that if FIFA does not ban third party ownership of players then UEFA will take matters into its own hands.

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Rousseff slams Brazilian racists and promises a World Cup against racism

Dilma Rousseff

By Andrew Warshaw
March 11 – As if Brazil’s World Cup organisers didn’t have enough problems on their plate delivering the infrastructure in time for the June kick-off, the country’s president Dilma Rousseff has now come out and expressed her concern about racism in football after a spate of incidents involving players and officials. In comments posted on Twitter, Rousseff lent her support to former Brazil international midfielder Marcos Arouca da Silva, who was subject to monkey chants while playing for Santos against Mogi Mirim last week.

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Matt Scott: Want to get doshed up? Then work the agency gravy train

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“Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love… Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent,” Claudio, Act II, Scene 1, Much Ado About Nothing

William Shakespeare seldom got much wrong about life and how we live it. His comedies, his tragedies and his histories contained some fairly implausible scenarios and embellishments at times but the enduring value of his work lies in his ability to skewer all facets of the human character.

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Bulgaria’s Lokomotiv fires director for political activism

atanas uzunov

By Alexander Krassimirov
March 10 – Bulgaria’s Lokomotiv Plovdiv have released their administrative director, Atanas Uzunov, accusing him of “political games”. The board of Lokomotiv claims that he used his official position to “influence the supporters of the club and they participate in political actions against the government of country.”

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David Owen: Could Neymar’s Brazil play future matches at London’s Olympic Stadium?

What do the following international football matches have in common: Brazil 0 Portugal 2 on 6 February 2007; Nigeria 1 Ghana 4 the same night; and Australia 3 Canada 0 on 15 October 2013?

Right, they were all played in London.

So was an extraordinary encounter last week pitting the Socceroos, once more, against Ecuador, France’s future World Cup opponents. While Roy Hodgson’s England were labouring to beat Denmark at Wembley,

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Osasu Obayiuwana: Libya’s Cup of Nations takes some believing

Charity, they say, is supposed to begin at home. Or, at least, in your continent.

But I am wondering whether it is an adage that officials of Libya’s government and the football federation have ever taken to heart.

At the recent laying of the foundation stone, at a stadium to be built in Tripoli, the country’s capital, ahead of the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations they are to host – assuming the war-torn country is peaceful enough –

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