January 6 – With the January transfer window starting to warm-up the player market, the CIES Football Observatory has released its latest ranking of the 120 big-5 league players with the highest transfer values.
January 6 – An A-League clash between Perth Glory and Adelaide United, which reportedly left a number of players suffering the symptoms of heat stroke, has reignited the debate over the temperatures it should be considered acceptable for matches to be played and whether player welfare is being sacrificed in the interests of television.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
January 6 – German football clubs VfB Stuttgart and Hannover 96 have extended their technical sponsorship deals with sports apparel makers Puma and Jako, respectively.
January 6 – The off-the-field crisis at Barcelona has deepened with the news that the Catalan giants have sacked Andoni Zubizarreta (pictured) as director of football.
By Alexander Krassimirov
January 6 – One of the largest shareholders in Bulgaria’s CSKA Sofia, Petar Mandjukov (pictured), has called for aggressive cuts in player wages, but the introduction of a bigger bonus system if the club qualifies for European competition.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 5 – The FIFA presidential election may not be until May 29 but as 2015 gets into its stride, Insideworldfootball identifies a number of key dates over the first quarter of the year that could shape the direction of football politics.
By Mark Baber
January 5 – The request of Leo Iyke Igbokwe for an arbitration committee to be set up to examine the validity of the September 30 Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) elections is expected to be presented to the NFF Board on January 8, offering another chance for football in Nigeria to bring the current leadership crisis to an end, without the involvement of civil courts.
January 5 – An English lower-league club is under pressure not to offer a convicted rapist a contract as debate over whether he should be given a chance to resume his footballing career after serving a jail sentence intensifies.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 5 – Preparations for this week’s Asian Cup in Australia, the continent’s flagship competition, have been plunged into controversy after a warm-up game between two of the finalists was called off just moments before kickoff.
By David Owen
January 4 – Hundreds of pages of documents relating to the British Government’s handling of the football hooliganism problem before and after the Heysel Stadium disaster in Brussels in May 1985 have been released by the National Archives.
By Paul Nicholson
January 5 – President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad Fahad Al-Sabah, has repeated his assertion that Qatar’s 2022 World Cup has been the subject of a “racist campaign”. He also questioned the independence of an American investigator to lead the FIFA ethics investigation into the world cup bidding.
By Samindra Kunti
January 5 – French football fans will have to fork out more money in 2015 if they want to watch Ligue 1 action following an injunction by the European Commission, asking for the nationwide implementation of VAT for sports tickets.
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.