December 5 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is to set up a permanent whistleblower function as part of a new integrity policy catchlined ‘Do the right thing’.The initiative will see the AFC take a significant lead in the battle against match-fixing in a period when some other confederations have taken a deliberate step back from funding their efforts in this area.
By Samindra Kunti
December 5 – France’s Paris Saint-Germain will open a football academy in Indonesia in co-operation with local club Bali United. Bali will run the academy and tire maker Multistrada Arah Sarana will be the main sponsor.
By Paul Nicholson in Abu Dhabi
December 2 – A sparkling awards evening at the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, broadcast live on television, saw the UAE’s star attacking midfielder Omar Abdulrahman win the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Player of the Year award, while Australia’s Caitlin Foord won the women’s award. The Asian International Player of the Year went to Japan and Leicester’s Shinji Okazaki.
By Paul Nicholson in Abu Dhabi
December 1 – With the leaders and achievers of Asian football gathering in Abu Dhabi ahead of the Asian Football Confederation’s glamorous Annual Awards night at the Emirates Palace, the UAE gathered its own stars alongside the AFC Award nominees to raise the awareness of disability football as part of its social responsibility programme.
By Paul Nicholson
November 25 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Competitions Committee is proposing a revamp of the AFC Cup, the confederations cup competition for clubs that come from the AFC’s lower ranked member nations. On what was a packed meeting agenda, changes to ranking criteria and a hard look at foreign player quotas were put forward.
November 23 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has cancelled its re-arranged extraordinary Congress, arranged principally to elect its FIFA Council members, and will now hold that vote at its Ordinary Congress in Bahrain in May 2017, in conjunction with the FIFA Congress being hosted in Bahrain.
November 21 – With the AFC Annual Awards Asian warming up for their December 1 unveiling in Abu Dhabi, the confederation has split out four awards that are being honoured at special occasions.
November 14 – A bizarre case of deliberate deception has reached its conclusion with Brazil-born forward Santos Monteiro Wanderley receiving a backdated three-month ban and his United Arab Emirates club Al Nasr thrown out of the Asian Champions League for two years after both were found guilty of faking documents so he could play in the tournament.
November 9 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has unveiled the final three nominees for this year’s women’s and men’s AFC Player of the Year Awards. China leads the list with male and female nominees, while Australia has two women players nominated in the final three.
November 7 – A North Korean goalkeeper who deliberately conceded a goal has been banned for a year and is out of next October’s Under-17 World Cup for bringing the game into disrepute.
October 31 – The Asian Football Confederation has rescheduled its Extraordinary Congress to elect candidates for the FIFA Council, postponed in equally extraordinary circumstances in protest at FIFA’s late decision to bar Saoud Al Mohannadi, vice-president of the Qatar Football Association, from standing as a result of an on-going ethics investigation and recommendation of a minimum two-year ban, for February 28 at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.
October 31 – Saudi authorities say they foiled a terrorist bomb plot due to have been carried out earlier this month at a World Cup qualifying match.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 20 – The election of Asian candidates to FIFA’s new-look ruling Council looks set to be rescheduled for late February or early March – in time to take up their seats before the FIFA Congress in Bahrain in May.
October 17 – There are now only limited places for the FT-AFC Football Summit in Doha, Qatar, October 25. The summit, to be opened with a keynote speech by AFC President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, will focus on Asia including panels on league development, finance and sponsorship, and governance.
September 30 – The system of additional assistant referees, brainchild of former UEFA president Michel Platini who always preferred it to goal-line technology, is to be adopted by Asia.
