By Mark Baber
December 15 – Tennant’s NI has been unveiled as the new title sponsor of the world’s fourth-oldest national cup completion – The Irish Cup – which will now be known as the Tennent’s Irish Cup.
December 15 – Arsenal’s automotive partner Citroën has activated its sponsorship with a promotion for the Citroën C4 Cactus which has first team stars playing Footpool on a specially created ‘table’ using the car’s Airbump technology.
By Samindra Kunti
December 15 – Brazilian club Santos will face a 2016 season of austerity after missing out on qualification for the Copa Libertadores.
By Samindra Kunti
December 15 – Brazilian football needs its own 1992 Premier League moment – with Bom Senso that moment may have finally arrived in the country that lit up the world stage with its teams and players.
By Andrew Warshaw in Amsterdam
December 15 – The head of the international players’ union FIFpro says football is facing its “worst ever crisis” because of the imbalance between rich and poor and has urged his members to stick together to safeguard the sport.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 15 – Hassan Al-Thawadi, head of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organising committee who was the public face of the surprise ballot victory five years ago, says his team has not been contacted by any officials from either the US or Swiss investigations into widespread football corruption and has repeated he does not expect the Gulf state to be stripped of host status.
December 15 – David Nakhid, the former Trinidad and Tobago midfielder who was excluded from the FIFA presidential campaign on a technicality, has failed in his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to have the ruling overturned.
December 14 – Tickets for the Euro 2016 finals went on sale this morning following the draw of the championship schedule in Paris on Saturday. 800,000 tickets are on sale to fans in this window which closes January 18.
By Paul Nicholson
December 14 – The Swiss government has responded to questions over whether it plans to shut down FIFA saying that it was not “currently” considering a state intervention at FIFA but fell short of ruling this out as a possibility.
By Mark Baber
December 14 – US prosecutors have used a leak to the Financial Times newspaper to pile pressure on the banks, central to the FIFA corruption scandal, to provide more information of use to their corruption probe.
By Ben Nicholson
December 14 – The MLS has committed near an additional $37 million for clubs to spend on player salaries. In both the 2016 and 2017 seasons, $125,000 per season will be dedicated to clubs to use on signing Homegrown Players, and $800,000 per season will be made available to all MLS clubs in the form of Targeted Allocation Money (TAM).
December 14 – UEFA president Michel Platini may have long been opposed to goal-line technology but his organisation now realises it can no longer resist its implementation.
By Ben Nicholson
December 14 – The 2015 MLS season came to an end last week with the MLS Cup final between Portland Timbers and Columbus Crew. And while the league’s lofty ambitions have been creating international stir in recent months, the cup final failed to generate much of a domestic stir, according TV viewership figures.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 14 – The failed joint 2018 World Cup bid by Belgium and Holland, hitherto untouched by the corruption allegations that have struck at the heart of FIFA and its related confederations, has suddenly become unwittingly embroiled in the saga.
By Ben Nicholson
December 14 – The United Soccer League Players Association (USLPA) – consisting of those players employed in the United Soccer League (USL), which is considered the third tier of US soccer – is coming close to formal unionisation.