July 7 – As well as being without their two best players, the injured Neymar and suspended skipper Thiago Silva, Brazil will also be missing their communications chief Rodrigo Paiva (pictured) at Tuesday’s World Cup semi-final against Germany.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 7 – FIFA have given Nigerian authorities until tomorrow (Tuesday) to re-instate the board of the national association (NFF) or face being kicked out of world football for violating its rules over government intervention.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 7 – The son of one of FIFA’s most powerful administrators has denied claims he illegally sold a World Cup ticket to touts in order to make money. Humberto Grondona, whose father Julio is FIFA’s senior vice-president as well as being head of the Argentine football association, has been asked to explain how a ticket he bought ended up in the wrong hands.
July 7 – The Egyptian Premier League finishes its 2013-14 season tonight with Al Alhy playing for an eighth successive title against Smouha in front of an empty stadium. Zmalek face Petrojet in a third place play-off, also in front of an empty stadium.
It was the most eagerly awaited of FIFA’s daily World Cup media briefings and the questions came thick and fast. Why, asked one highly respected news agency reporter, was FIFA preaching zero tolerance towards racism when zero action on the ground was in fact the reality?
It was a fair point but few, if anybody, expected the two distinguished members of the panel to provide such diametrically opposed responses.
Sometimes, quite fairly,
July 4 – Brazil 2014 World Cup summer fever has bumped heads with the much-talked about June heat in Qatar. But not all fans have been getting hot under the collar as Qatar 2022 organisers have been testing cooling technology in an open air fan zone in Katera, Doha.
By Mark Baber
July 4 – The president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Aminu Maigari, and other board members were arrested by the Department of State Security Service at Nanmdi Azikiwe International Airport as they returned from the World Cup on Friday, July 4, 2014, according to reports from the NFF secretariat in Abuja.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 4 – The man leading FIFA’s fight to cut out discrimination has said that insufficient effort has been made by the authorities at the World Cup and that there has been a “disconnect” between the stated aim and what has actually occurred.
July 4 – In an operation dubbed Jules Rimet, police in Brazil have arrested 11 people and broken up an international gang that was apparently involved in the illegal sale of World Cup tickets.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 4 – In the first serious infrastructure tragedy during the World Cup, at least two people have been killed and several more injured after part of an unfinished overpass collapsed on to vehicles in the host city of Belo Horizonte.
July 4 – The Football Union of Russia (FUR) is to increase the tax on clubs that employ foreign coaches. The FUR already levies a tax on foreign coaches but a commission of coaching excellence that met yesterday is examining how much should actually be paid.
By Ben Nicholson
July 4 – Whilst head coach Jurgen Klinsmann wrote the USA a ‘sick-note’ urging employers to allow fans to watch their world cup game, Colombian government workers have been afforded the luxury minus the paperwork by their own President.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
July 4 – The Serbian Football Association (FSS) is looking to boost its Jelen SuperLiga and increase the marketing opportunities for the Serbian championship, according to Zoran Lakovic, the secretary general of the FSS. New measures include a restructured top tier and a relaxation of foreign player rules.
Considering they have a common 450km-long border and have together been the beating heart of the European project for nearly 60 years, France and Germany are remarkably dissimilar.
Not so their football teams, which clash in Rio on Friday in what promises to be a fascinating World Cup quarter-final.
Take the goalkeepers: Hugo Lloris and Manuel Neuer don’t exactly look alike; but they are very proactive exponents of their craft, among the quickest to sprint off their lines to snuff out trouble.
July 3 – Quarter-finals kick off Frday with two match-ups that feature the battle of the giants from South America and Europe. Hosts Brazil face increasingly favourited Colombia, while France and Germany square off in what could be an old-school Euro classic.