By Mark Baber
June 6 – The AIFF, which turned down the appeals of four clubs against being barred from next season’s I-League, has come under attack for failing to meet its own criteria.
There is nothing like a western-orchestrated attack on one of its member federations to put Asian football’s nose out of joint and provoke a strong response.
Over the past few days, both the head of the Asian Football Confederation, Sheikh Salman Ebrahim El Khalifa, and Sheikh Ahmad Fahad Al-Sabah, Asia’s Olympic supremo, have joined forces to roundly condemn the corruption allegations being hurled at Qatar over its 2022 World Cup bid.
June 6 – A leading hacker group is preparing a cyber-attack on corporate sponsors of the World Cup in Brazil to protest the lavish spending on the World Cup, according to sources close to the group.
By Mark Baber
June 6 – Hangzhou-based e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd announced Thursday that it is taking a 50% stake in Guangzhou Evergrande for 1.2 billion yuan ($192 million). The valuation of $284 million would put Evergrande into 20th place in the latest (2013) Forbes List of the World’s Most Valuable Clubs.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – In a move that seems bound to be viewed as highly provocative by FIFA and UEFA, Ukraine’s Crimean-based clubs have changed their names in a bid to join the Russian league following the annexation of the peninsula by Russian authorities.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
June 6 – Polish football club Lech Poznan has announced the signing of a new technical sponsorship deal with Nike. The US brand will replace Puma as the appareil partner in the 2014/2015 season.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 8 – Asia’s top Olympic official has waded into the latest corruption claims over Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid by blasting the allegations as being “racist” towards Arabs in general.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – FIFA president Sepp Blatter has sidestepped calls for a revote on the 2022 World Cup, insisting that no decision should be taken until FIFA’s ethics committee investigator, Michel Garcia, completes his probe of Qatar’s winning bid and the entire 2018 and 2022 process.
By David Owen
June 5 – Bayern Munich have retained their status as the club supplying most players for the 2014 FIFA World Cup now that the provisional squads have been trimmed to final squads of 23 players per country.
June 5 – Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Scudamore, is to undergo heart surgery next week, Scudamore informed member clubs at the league’s annual meeting today.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 5 – In a robust and passionate defence of his moral conduct as UEFA president, Michel Platini has denounced what he claims is a deliberate campaign to discredit him and says that despite all the allegations over Qatar staging the 2022 World Cup, the decision was the right one for football.
By Mark Baber
June 5 – FIFA on Wednesday confirmed the extension to have worldwide effect of the domestic sanctions imposed by the Austrian Football Association (OFB) and the Iran Football Federation (IRIFF) in relation to match manipulation.
“The Turks have a homely proverb: they say ‘the fish stinks first at the head’, meaning, that if the servant is disorderly, it is because the master is so.” Sir James Porter, Observations on the religion, law, government, and manners of the Turks
Considering its position as regulator of a game so steeped in laws, regulations and statutes, certain elements running FIFA have been disorderly for a long time.
June 5 – Serbia’s first division promotion playoff between Rad Belgrade and Metalac Gornji Milanovac was abandoned on Wednesday after a fan set off a tear gas canister and forced the players to leave the pitch.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 5 – Despite the stadium delays, overspending and widespread adverse publicity about crime and poverty, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has come out fighting ahead of the World Cup which kicks off in a week.