July 11 – Portugal head into tonight’s final Group B fixture in Sion with a simple brief on paper — win and score plenty. In reality, their path to the Euro 2025 quarter-finals remains steep, narrow, and dependent on favours from elsewhere.
By Mark Baber
November 19 – In a throwback to the Bernard Tapie scandals of the 1990s, French police swooped in on the leading lights of Olympique Marseille (OM) on Tuesday morning, arresting club president Vincent Labrun and general manager Philip Perez at their homes in Saint-Remy de Provence and Marseille and questioning them over potential corruption and kick backs involving multi-million Euro transfer deals.
Another clever delaying tactic deliberately timed so that Sepp Blatter can turn his attention to retaining the presidency without the distraction of corruption allegations? Or, just as plausibly, a clear signal of intent to try and repair the damage and get to the bottom of a saga which, it now transpires, could involve criminal activity by football administrators?
November 19 – Manchester United are now feeling the pain of failure to qualify for the Champions League in the boardroom. The club has announced a revenue fall of almost 10% (£9.8 million) for the three months to September 30 in comparison to the same period in 2013.
By Paul Nicholson
November 19 – According to Russian news agency Tass, scientists at Russia’s Siberian university have started building Russia’s first robot team.
By David Owen
November 19 – There was potentially good news for one senior FIFA figure in a strategic roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement unveiled with a flourish in the Olympic capital of Lausanne on Tuesday. But not so, apparently, for another.
November 19 – The debate over how much English Premier League football should be televised live domestically is back on the agenda. UK broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has opened an investigation into how the Premier League sells media rights following a complaint from Virgin Media, which claims more matches should be available for live broadcast.
By Andrew Warshaw
November 19 – Scotland’s former World Cup referee Hugh Dallas (pictured) has stepped down as head of referees in Greece just days after matches were suspended indefinitely following an attack on one of his colleagues.
November 19 – Singapore’s high court has rejected an application by one of the world’s most notorious match-fixers to review a detention order that has allowed him to be held for more than a year without charge, according to his lawyer.
The row that has erupted over FIFA’s handling of the much trumpeted Michael Garcia report on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup means we are once again seeing a re-run of what is now sports oldest soap opera: how shall we reform FIFA? It is not often that bad movies get so many repeat showings, even on a dank, dull, evening in Bognor. But then this is FIFA – an organisation where the past is not a foreign country but one that is always being revisited.
By Andrew Warshaw and Paul Nicholson
November 18 – In another dramatic twist in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup investigation into possible corruption in the bidding process, FIFA has lodged a criminal complaint against a number of individuals (“persons”) with the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland in Berne.
By Andrew Warshaw
November 18 – Two whistleblowers who provided potentially incriminatory evidence to the FIFA World Cup anti-corruption probe are furious that their cover has been effectively blown and have both registered a formal complaint against FIFA ethics judge Hans Joachim Eckert.
By Mark Baber
November 18 – The Kenya Football Federation (FKF) is considering increasing the number of clubs in the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) from 16 to 18 and whether or not to move from the current February to November format to an August to May season.
By Paul Nicholson
November 18 – Russia’s first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov has said that the construction spend on stadia for the 2018 World Cup will remain fixed at 300 billion roubles ($6.4 billion) – the same figure that was set in 2010. Shuvalov made his remarks on a visit to Moscow’s recently complete Okritie-Arena, one of two venues in the capital that will host matches in 2018.
By Andrew Warshaw
November 18 – The two FIFA ethics chiefs at the centre of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding investigation have agreed to meet face-to-face on Thursday to try and agree over what should and shouldn’t be published and resolve their untimely dispute that has heaped embarrassment on world football’s governing body.
“The negative tenor of the public debate around FIFA at the moment is neither good for football nor for FIFA and its partners.” Adidas statement, June 2014
Adidas has claimed that football is “the DNA of our company”. So when FIFA’s longest-serving commercial partner remarked publicly about the threat to football’s image presented by the many corruption allegations swirling around its governing body, Adidas revealed fears that its own reflection might become haggard.