By Andrew Warshaw in Nyon
January 11 – UEFA President Michel Platini (pictured) today issued his strongest warning to date that clubs who recklessly overspend risk being heavily sanctioned until and unless they get their houses in order.
By Mike Rowbottom
January 11 – The League Managers Association has rung the alarm bell over the subject of short-term hiring and firing policies which “scapegoat” managers, increasingly damaging the fabric of the English game.
By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
January 11 – Simon Greenberg, chief of staff during England’s disastrous bid to host the 2018 World Cup, has taken up a new role as the first director of corporate affairs at Rupert Murdoch’s News International.
January 11 – One of the world’s leading full-service hospitality agencies has been appointed by Coca-Cola to support its hospitality and ticketing programmes at Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.
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The imminent arrival of Wembley chairman David Bernstein in the same post at the English Football Association (FA) has sent me scurrying to the FA’s accounts.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
January 10 – He is young, he is dedicated and he insists he will not be influenced by politics or petty feuds.
January 9 – Three candidates are standing to replace suspended FIFA vice president Reynald Temarii as leader of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC), it has been announced.
By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
January 8 – Spurs’ plan to sign former England captain David Beckham on loan from Major League Soccer team Los Angeles Galaxy is to try to help them win their bid to take over the Olympic Stadium after London 2012, it has been claimed by Karren Brady, the chair of rivals West Ham United.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
January 8 – The International Olympic Committee (IOC) handles its finances “like a housewife”, FIFA President Sepp Blatter has claimed in a bitter attack on the organisation he has been a member of since 1999.
By Andrew Warshaw at the Khalifa Stadium in Doha
January 7 – If a jaw-dropping opening ceremony and a dazzling firework display (pictured) high into the night sky are a barometer of a country’s ability to host a World Cup, then Qatar should have no worries about staging theirs in little under 12 years from now.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
January 7 – The prospect of a winter World Cup in 2022 moved a giant step closer today when FIFA President Sepp Blatter (pictured) gave the concept his personal backing.
By David Owen
January 7 – FIFA has announced details of how a $40 million (£25.9 million) pot it earmarked for clubs whose players took part in last year’s World Cup in South Africa is being distributed.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
January 6 – Back in October, at the Leaders in Football conference in London, Chung Mong-joon, South Korea’s distinguished and highly respected FIFA veteran, made a deliberate and calculated stand against his boss, Sepp Blatter (pictured right).
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
January 6 – FIFA President Sepp Blatter today denounced what he described as the “envy and jealousy” of the organisation’s critics following arguably the toughest few weeks of his Presidency.
Has David Beckham done something that no other footballer has ever managed?
I do not mean his setting the pace among male fashion models, or the fact that he is now tutoring the next generation of Beckhams to be fashion models as well.
His eight year old son Romeo is now 26th in GQ magazine’s top 50 best-dressed men in Britain list, not that far behind David, who is 16th.