By Andrew Warshaw
January 2 – The increasing practise of experienced European, especially Premier League, stars moving across the pond to Major League Soccer for a final career hurrah has come under fresh scrutiny as a result of Frank Lampard’s controversial decision to temporarily snub New York City.
By Mark Baber
January 2 – Electronic Art’s FIFA15 has been unveiled by The Entertainment Retailer’s Association as the UK’s biggest video game of 2014 after selling 2,663,296 copies, ahead of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and only coming second in the chart of the 20 best-selling video games, movies and albums of 2014 to Disney’s movie Frozen.
January 2 – The powerplay turmoil in the Rangers boardroom battle continued over New Year as the largest shareholder Laxey Partners sold their 16.32% stake to consortium of wealthy fans for £2.6 million.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 2 – Stung at having its FIFA-imposed transfer ban upheld by the highest judiciary body in sport, Barcelona have struck back by denouncing the verdict and refusing to accept what it has described as a “disproportionate” and “excessive” ruling.
By Mark Baber
January 2 – Hero MotoCorp Ltd, the world’s biggest bicycle and motorbike manufacturer, is in still in negotiation over the terms of a three-year deal to be the title sponsors for the All India Football Federation (AIFF) Federation Cup and the I-League – although the deal was announced last week.
By Paul Nicholson
January 2 – The Ghana FA (GFA) has repeated that it will be able to pay the $3.1 million money borrowed from the government once an official request for the funds is made.
By Samindra Kunti
January 2 – The KNVB and the KBVB, the Dutch and Belgian FA’s respectively, will redesign their professional women’s league after a joint-decision to end the BeNe League due to insufficient financial resources in the Netherlands.
December 30 – David Beckham’s prospective MLS franchise in Miami has stalled ever since the city batted down several stadium proposals. Beckham’s group has been quietly licking its wounds over the past months while other US cities have been loudly courting the MLS in hope of receiving an expansion bid.
December 30 – Japanese players have leapt to the defence of head coach Javier Aguirre after the Mexican vehemently denied any involvement in a match-fixing scandal during the time he worked in Spain.
December 30 – North Korea is reported to have replaced suspended head coach Yun Jong-su with his predecessor Jo Tong-sop (pictured) for next month’s Asian Cup in Australia.
By Paul Nicholson
December 30 – Scottish Championship club Hibernian is giving the opportunity to its fans to become 51% owners with a new share issue. The club also announced that as part of the restructuring it is now free of bank debt.
By Alexander Krassimirov
December 30 – The Supporters Trust of Bulgarian club Levski, ‘Blue Bulgaria’, has called for their representative on the club’s Board to be appointed as CEO. The demand has not been dismissed by Levski owner Todor Batkov but early indications are that he will not make a management change.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 30 – Candidates for FIFA president have exactly one month from yesterday to decide whether or not to go for the most powerful job in world football.
December 29 – Global popularity can be a fickle friend when it comes to press coverage – just ask FIFA president Sepp Blatter. But it seems that Twitter popularity doesn’t discriminate in quite the same way when it comes to building a global following.
By David Owen
December 23 – FIFA has moved quickly to spell out how much in one-off financial contributions each if its 209 member associations will next year be entitled to, and the answer is $1.05 million. Adding in a first $250,000 bonus already made available, it means that each association will be eligible for $1.3 million of one-off payments over the 18 months from June this year. The overall bill for this comes to $271.7 million.