By Andrew Warshaw. chief correspondent
October 31 – The head of Sierra Leone football has painted a grim picture of the devastating effect the Ebola crisis is having on the sport back home, with a fanatical football nation in lockdown domestically and forced to play internationals overseas.
By David Owen
October 31 – The venue for the final of next year’s women’s World Cup in Canada will need to seek recertification in January, to verify that its artificial pitch surface remains of the necessary quality.
By Mark Baber
October 31 – South Korean and French delegations have handed over rival bids for the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup 2018 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup on Thursday to FIFA President Blatter and FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke.
October 31 – The Russia 2018 World Cup will be held at 12 stadiums across 11 cities. In keeping with World Cup tradidition a series of posters have been designed to promote the World Cup and refelct the culture and traditions of the country’s football. Pictured here is a gallery of the posters from the 11 cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Sochi and Rostov-on-Don.
By Paul Nicholson
October 31 – Education is taking lead position in the battle against match-fixing. With a number of confederations and national federations launching player education programmes – the Sportradar-led integrity tour in Wales being the latest – player union FIFPro has launched its own campaign with FIFA and Interpol.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 31 – FIFA have been forced to apologise for a politically embarrassing gaffe after a video launching the logo for the 2018 World Cup in Russia displayed the disputed Crimean peninsula as being part of Russian territory.
October 31 – In an unprecedented ruling that has stunned Scottish football as well as his English parent club, Celtic’s Bulgarian international winger Aleksandar Tonev has been handed a seven-match ban for racial abuse.
By Mark Baber
October 31 – The day before the expiry of a FIFA deadline for his court case to be withdrawn, and following intervention from Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, Chris Giwa’s faction has withdrawn its case against Amaju Pinnick and his newly elected board, forestalling a possible FIFA ban for government interference.
The whole business of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, and when it should be held, has again emphasised why sport, more than any other business, must make sure that it arrives at its decisions after very careful deliberation. Now you may say surely that is true of everything we do. Yes. But sport faces a problem no other business, indeed activity, does. This is that by its very nature people who follow sport tend to make instinctive judgements.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 30 – English football authorities have split public opinion by clamping down hard on former England and Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand and one of the country’s top referees, Mark Clattenburg, for two unrelated misdemeanours.
By David Owen
October 30 – The construction and renovation of the 10 football stadia to be used for Euro 2016 is generating a total of 20,000 jobs in the building and services sector, according to Patrick Kanner, the French Sports Minister.
October 30 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko will give the welcome address to World Football Forum gathering in Moscow, November 13. Organiser have now released their programme for the event which ends with a VIP reception at the Inter-Continental Hotel.
October 30 – English second-tier club Bolton Wanderers are playing down rumours of a potential takeover by a Thai consortium which would represent the latest foreign incursion into English football.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 30 – FIFA have broken their silence over the artificial turf controversy that threatens to disrupt next year’s Womens World Cup in Canada, insisting the pitches will be of the highest standard and rejecting any sense of discrimination against female players.
October 30 – On the pitch Chelsea were denied a win in the Premier League against Manchester United last weekend by a last gasp equalizer by Robin van Persie. Off the pitch commercial results are far from evenly matched with Man Utd this week adding two new sponsors, while Chelsea have put faith in new signing Christian Purslow to lead the line in a bid to boost their global commercial activity.