June 1 – Just two weeks before the start of the World Cup, a report released by European football’s leading anti-discrimination body warns of a rise in racist and homophobic chants at Russian matches this season and claims FIFA and the Russian authorities have missed “valuable opportunities” to change attitudes.
June 1 – A month after co-hosting a sports integrity conference in Porto, Portugal, the Portuguese sports journalists’ representative body, CNID (National Club of Sports Press) has given the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) a ‘Recognition Award’.
May 31 – The English Football League’s title sponsor Sky Bet is spending £1 million on delivering a responsible gambling series of education workshops to all 72 of its clubs next season.
May 29 – A tub-thumping Michel Platini has vowed to return to football after Swiss prosecutors said no evidence has been found “so far” in their investigation into possible financial wrongdoing.
May 29 – Jose Hawilla (pictured), the ‘Mr Big’ in the football corruption cases brought by the US Department of Justice and who co-operated to bring down a cabal of crooked football administrators, has died in a Sao Paulo hospital aged 74.
May 29 – Being arguably the most powerful woman in sport and certainly in football has not stopped FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura encountering prejudice.
By Mark Baber
May 24 – German prosecutors in Frankfurt have filed charges of tax evasion against former DFB Presidents Wolfgang Niersbach (pictured left) and Theo Zwanziger and the DFB Secretary General Horst R. Schmidt.
May 23 – The Ivory Coast Football Federation (FIF) has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to review FIFA’s latest decision to audit the football body. The Ivorians are objecting that this is the second time in two months that FIFA has ordered an audit.
May 21 – Former UEFA president Michel Platini is unlikely to re-emerge as a footballing political force following his worldwide ban but that hasn’t stopped him stirring things up when the opportunity comes around.
May 21 – British-based German internationals Mesut Ozil and Ilkay Gundogan met German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the weekend in a series of clear the air talks after they were pictured with Turkey’s controversial president President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
May 21 – Chelsea’s billionaire Russian owner Roman Abramovich, whose club won a distinctly unexciting FA Cup on Saturday to save their season, faced delays in renewing his UK visa and did not attend the game, according to reports.
May 21 – The data mining and data harvesting techniques used on Facebook to ultimately form opinion in the US election that saw the election of Donald Trump, were also used in the UK to target football fans and influence them to vote for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.
The FIFA trials – somewhat misnamed as they were very much more to do with CONCACAF and CONMEBOL and greedy individuals – are not over. A lot of people are still trembling in their shoes and watching carefully – but what for?
May 17 – The Argentine Football Association has apologised for the publication of a World Cup manual that included advice on how to seduce Russian women.
May 17 – Europe’s leading football stakeholders have joined forces to oppose Gianni Infantino’s plans to radically change the game’s global landscape by saying they have “serious reservations about the process” surrounding his proposal to enlarge the Club World Cup to 24 teams and create a biennial global Nations League.