By Paul Nicholson
October 21 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has released a statement rebutting reports that it has concluded an agreement with Lagardère Sports for an eight-year extension of their broadcast and marketing contract held via their World Sport Group agency.
October 21 – Palestinian football has won a decisive battle off the field over the contentious World Cup qualifier with Saudi Arabia and will host it on November 5.
By Paul Nicholson
October 21 – CONCACAF, rocked by the arrest of its president Jeffrey Webb and Costa Rican president Eduardo Li in May in Zurich over allegations of requesting and accepting bribes to secure marketing sales contracts, has released a new code of conduct for its partners.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
October 20 – Leopold Windtner, the president of Austria’s football federation ÖFB, has unveiled plans to build a new national football stadium following high attendance figures for country’s Euro 2016 qualifiers.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 20 – Asian football supremo Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa has been given considerable encouragement by “senior” figures in the game to run for the FIFA presidency.
By Mark Baber
October 20 – Kuwait’s cabinet, hosted by His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, have decided the city-state will not host the 2015 edition of the Gulf Cup, whilst describing FIFA’s decision of last week to ban the country from all international football citing government interference as “arbitrary and hasty.”
October 20 – Barcelona say they will use all legal means at their disposal to fight a second fine imposed by UEFA after fans displayed pro-Catalan flags during September’s Champions League game at home to Bayer Leverkusen.
October 20 – With the current US attorney general having unleashed a storm in the world of football worldwide but particularly in the Americas, it is appropriate that a former US attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., will give a keynote address at the Securing Sport 2015 conference in New York, November 3-4, with the aim of giving perspective on the challenges facing sport from a legal and policy standpoint.
October 20 – Marco Polo del Nero, the Brazilian FA president who famously made a quick getaway just as seven other football officials, including his predecessor, were detained as part of the US corruption probe on that dramatic May morning in Zurich, has denied he has been forced out of the FIFA executive committee.
By Ben Nicholson
October 20 – CONMEBOL has cut its links with Argentine sports marketing company Datisa, ending agreements that gave sponsorship and broadcast rights to Datisa for the Copa America tournaments, and in particular the Copa America Centenario scheduled to take place in the US next year, the first time the world’s oldest football tournament had been played outside the South American continent.
October 19 – FIFA has removed the entire executive committee of Thailand’s football association (FAT) after its controversial president Worawi Makudi was suspended pending a full ethics investigation.
By Samindra Kunti
October 19 – São Paulo may have found English money to abate their current debt crisis with a €33.7 million cash injection into the club looking likely, though the identity of the English group has not been named.
October 19 – Kuwait, home to Asia’s most influential sports power broker Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, has been banned from international football because of government interference in the running of the sport domestically.
By Samindra Kunti
October 19 – Flamengo’s chairman Eduardo de Mello wants the club to take management control of Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana stadium to maximise its revenue potential, but is facing opposition from within the sporting club.
By Ben Nicholson
October 19 – The MLS has joined up with other heavyweight sporting organisations in the US across multiple sporting disciplines to advance race relations. The MLS, NFL, NBA, NHL, to name a few, have joined the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE) to launch a nationwide campaign that uses the power of sport as vehicle to promote understanding, respect and equality.