“Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you,” Alexander Graham Bell, March 10, 1876
The first words ever spoken down a telephone line might be laced with a menacing undertone were Sky’s chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, to pick up a handset today and repeat them, this time to his counterpart at BT Vision, Marc Watson.
BT Vision is a subsidiary of the British former monopoly telecoms provider,
By Paul Nicholson
November 12 – Sonia Bien-Aime has been appointed to the executive committee of CONCACAF. Bien-Aime is also one of three women on FIFA’s Executive Committee, having been co-opted to the top table of world football at the FIFA Congress in Mauritius earlier this year.
November 11 – The CONCACAF Women’s Under-17 Championship ended with a penalty shoot-out win for Mexico over Canada in Montego Bay, Jamaica, this weekend. Mexico and Canada will join host Costa Rica as CONCACAF representatives in the 2014 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup, which starts in March.
By Jamie Styles
November 12 – Not all footballers on Twitter cause a storm of controversy. Sunderland striker Connor Wickham used his Twitter following over the weekend to help raise money for charity.
All eyes were focused on the match, tagged as ‘The Fly to the Top of Asia’. Quite like the Party’s propoganda protocol, a bit like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…
On November 9 in Guangzhou, Evergrande were crowned the champions of Asia, grandly. Even though the official TV ratings figures didn’t prove this match attracted a dominant viewership nationally, go through any media outlet, the impression was on that night, nothing could compare to the club’s climb to the top of Asia.
By Andrew Warshaw
November 11 – Even by Italian standards, it was surely one of the most bizarre episodes ever to occur in a professional football match. A third division derby was called off on Sunday after visiting side Nocerina, having allegedly received death threats from their own fans, deliberately reduced themselves to six players forcing the game to be abandoned.
By Andrew Warshaw
November 11 – In UK football’s most far-reaching broadcasting game-changer of recent years, BT Sport has won the UK rights to screen the Champions League and Europa League from 2015 in a staggering £897 million three-year deal with UEFA’s marketing agency TEAM.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
November 11 – Poland’s Ekstraklasa is aiming to introduce a number of modifications into the country’s mass events safety bill. The operator of the top tier of Poland’s professional football league outlined the proposed changes in a document entitled Safe Ekstraklasa: shutting down the stadiums, shutting down the opportunities.
November 11 – So often fraught with controversy, Nigerian football is back in the spotlight for the right reasons after winning the world under-17 championship for a record fourth time, overpowering holders Mexico 3-0 in Abu Dhabi.
By Andrew Warshaw
November 11 – FIFA president Sepp Blatter has ruled out the Qatar 2022 World Cup being moved to January and February because of a potential clash with the Winter Olympics, severely narrowing down the options to switch the tournament from summer. FIFA recently set up a working group to look into alternative dates for 2022 with all the stakeholders involved – medical experts, broadcasters, sponsors, leagues and clubs.
November 11 – The second ticketing sales window for the 2014 World Cup Brazil opened today at 12:00 CET / 9:00 Brasilia time. More than 220,000 tickets are available in this sales window for 57 matches and FIFA is warning that demand is expected to be high. Unlike the first sales window, the second window will allocate tickets on a first come first served basis.
By Alexander Krassimirov
November 11 – Police in the Bulgarian town of Shumen have launched an investigation after a series of threats were made against the Bulgarian international football referee Stanislav Todorov (pictured). The referee lodged a complaint at the police station following the threats. Todorov was interviewed for an hour, and also informed the newspaper ’24 hours’ Daily. The police in Shumen have confirmed Todorov’s report of the incident but declined to give further details.
On Thursday I went to one of the most uplifting sports events I have attended in a long time.
It took place in a small English town of perhaps 12,000 people with Roman origins. Its apogee came when the sport’s supreme champion of modern times, aged 39, set a benchmark for sustained excellence and endurance on a par with Australian cricketer Don Bradman’s 99.94 Test match batting average, or US swimmer Michael Phelps’s 22 Olympic medals,
By Andrew Warshaw
November 8 – South Korea’s women’s football league has been rocked by an unusual gender row that has led to the resignation of a team coach and prompted a major human rights dispute. Six of the seven K-League teams recently requested that star striker Park Eun-Seon, who plays for Seoul City Hall Amazones, undergo a gender test. They also asked Korea Women’s Football Federation (KWFF) to bar Park from playing until her gender is verified.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
November 8 – Poland’s Legia Warsaw has unveiled Central Europe’s leading betting operator Fortuna Entertainment Group as its new main sponsor. The deal will come into effect next year and last until end 2016.