By Andrew Warshaw
May 25 – Ten months after Lionel Messi and his father were given 21-month suspended jail sentences for tax fraud relating to the player’s image rights, Spain’s Supreme Court has confirmed both the sentence and the €2 million fine imposed on Barcelona’s Argentine superstar.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 25 – Costas Takkas, close associate of disgraced ex-CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb and like Webb one of the original ‘Zurich Seven’ arrested two years ago in that infamous hotel swoop that plunged FIFA into unprecedented crisis, has changed his plea to guilty to money laundering conspiracy as his trial gets closer.
May 25 – In a move that will certainly not endear him to the majority of fans – other than those of Chelsea perhaps – former England captain John Terry says he “could not care less” about the furore over his contrived substitution against Sunderland in last weekend’s final Premier League programme of the season.
May 24 – Has Ricardo Teixeira, once one of world football’s biggest power brokers who had a seat on the FIFA executive committee and headed the local organising committee of the 2014 Brazil World Cup, struck some kind of deal with the US authorities?
May 24 – French police investigating suspected tax fraud have raided the headquarters of Paris Saint-Germain and the homes of the club’s Argentine stars Angel Di Maria and Javier Pastore as well as Nantes forward Emiliano Sala.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 23 – In a major development apparently linked to the ongoing United States probe into football-related corruption, former Barcelona president Sandro Rosell has been arrested, along with his wife, as part of a money laundering investigation.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 21 – Germany’s FIFA Council member Reinhard Grindel has re-iterated his opposition to the removal of FIFA ethics chiefs Cornel Borbely and Hans-Joachim Eckert saying the surprise move should have been handled more transparently.
May 19 – Players who dive or feign injury could face two-match suspensions from the start of next season under a new English Football Association crackdown.
May 19 – One of the biggest fixtures in the Swedish football calendar has been postponed due to match-fixing fears.
May 18 – The International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) has set up a special investigations unit that can be hired to look into sports corruption.
May 17 – In the latest tax evasion case to hit Spanish football, the prosecutor in Madrid says it has filed a lawsuit against Radamel Falcao (pictured) and Fabio Coentrao, accusing them of hiding almost €7 million from the tax office between 2012 and 2014.
May 16 – Argentine star Ezequiel Lavezzi, one of the most highly paid players in world football, has been forced to apologise after he made a slant-eyed pose in promotional pictures for his Chinese Super League club.
May 16 – Britain’s biggest selling daily newspaper the Sun has dropped its former editor Kelvin MacKenzie, now an outspoken columnist, over an article he wrote likening Everton midfielder Ross Barkley, an England international, to a gorilla.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 15 – Germany’s jettisoned FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert has spoken of his personal hurt at being targeted in Gianni Infantino’s purge of senior judicial personnel.
By Paul Nicholson
May 15 – Timing is everything in football and there would have been a few ironic smiles at the weekend when it was announced in the US that Judge Michael J. Garcia of the New York Court of Appeals was one of four candidates being interviewed for the role of FBI Director to replace the ousted James Comey.