July 2 – Having looked like a team that were struggling to find any cohesion or common purpose after four straight losses, including a miserable performance in March at the Concacaf Nations League final, suddenly the USA look as though, if not the real deal, they are certainly worth a reappraisal.
July 2 – Elite football in the form of major tournament returns to Switzerland for the first time since 2008, with Euro 2025 and the quest for continental glory set to take over the Alpine nation this July with more than 600,000 tickets sold and increased prize money on offer for the 16 finalists.
July 10 – Two Serie A players have been banned for three months and 10 days and fined €10,000 each in the latest development in Italian football’s long-running match-fixing scandal.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
July 10 – FIFA president Sepp Blatter aims to set up a special task force to try and break the increasingly bitter deadlock between Israel and Palestine over restrictions placed on Palestinian footballers in the occupied territories.
A summer Thursday on the shores of Lake Geneva. I am in a salon in Lausanne’s plush Palace hotel talking to Temel Kotil, President and chief executive of Turkish Airlines.
We are just days away from the curtain being drawn on the airline’s sponsorship of Manchester United, arguably the world’s favourite football club (Aeroflot have become the club’s sponsor). Yet I don’t think I have ever met a business leader so bursting with enthusiasm about the effect sporting partnerships can have on multinational companies.
Andy Murray’s success has led to much talk of how British sport is finally getting rid of the sporting monkeys that have so long perched on its back. This is an understandable reaction.
When you win a coveted sporting crown after 77 years you are entitled to celebrate. And the triumphant feeling is all the more understandable given that it has crowned two years of success which has done much to make the British feel that the nation is no longer a sporting pariah.
By Mark Baber
July 9 – Pressure is being exerted by media and politicians in Tanzania to expedite the long delayed launch of electronic ticketing in stadia to counter corruption and increase revenues.
By Mark Baber
July 9 – In its first year of operation after being switched from Preston to Manchester, England’s National Football Museum has welcomed 458,000 visitors, smashing the 350,000 target and fully justifying Manchester City Council’s investment in the project.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 9 – Cameroon officials have hit back at being suspended by Fifa and have pledged to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 9 – Bulgarian icon Hristo Stoichkov has quit as coach of CSKA Sofia a week after 15 fans were detained following an attack on the headquarters of the Bulgarian FA in protest at the debt-ridden club facing the prospect of being plunged into obscurity.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 9 – Russia’s growing commercial influence in European sport, and football in particular, has been underlined with the announcement that Manchester United have made state-controlled Aeroflot their airline partner.The five-year deal runs until 2018 when Russia stages the World Cup and marks the latest in a string of Russian ownership and sponsorship agreements.
By David Owen
July 9 – Buenos Aires has won the right to host the 2018 Youth Olympic Games beating Medellín and Glasgow, in a vote held in the Swiss city of Lausanne.
By Paul Nicholson in Los Angeles
July 7 – It could become a football quiz question. Which is the only confederation in world football where every country has a beach? The answer is CONCACAF, the confederation that covers north and central America and the Caribbean.
By Mark Baber
Nigerian football, never far from controversy, faces increased scrutiny after the country’s House of Representatives Committee on Sports called for a total review of the Nigeria Football Federation’s (NFF) agreements with sponsors and the Sports Minister set up a panel to investigate the recent bonus row.
By Mark Baber
July 8 – In a decision hailed as a sign of decreased tensions, South Korea’s Unification Ministry has given the go-ahead for the North Korean women’s national team to participate in the Women’s East Asian Cup which kicks off on July 20.
July 8 – A new initiative to promote integration and social awareness was unveiled by CONCACAF prior to the Gold Cup’s first game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena — a direct follow-up to Fifa’s Anti-racism and Discrimination campaign approved at its recent congress in Mauritius.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 8 – On a truce mission some might describe as mission impossible, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has promised to do everything he can to ease travel restrictions placed on Palestinian footballers by the Israeli authorities and to help resolve the differences between the two sides.