By Andrew Warshaw
October 19 – Time and again he fought off his accusers and protested his innocence while other FIFA powerbrokers around him were plunged into shame. But the net has finally closed in on Thailand’s Worawi Makudi who has been banned by FIFA’s ethics committee for five years for election forgery.
October 19 –Argentina has refused a US extradition request for three of it nationals accused of bribery and money laundering in the US Department of Justice investigation into football corruption worldwide.
October 18 – Rome-based John Cabot University (JCU) has joined with exclusive sports law association Rex Sport to launch their Advanced Course in International and Comparative Sports law, a masters-level course aimed at law and other graduates who want to build careers in sports law.
By Paul Nicholson
September 1 – Argentine investigations into corruption and money laundering by former President Néstor Kirchner between 2003 and 2008 look set to touch on FIFA and at least one of its former officials, as well football investments within the Swiss market.
By Paul Nicholson
October 7 – In what can be a positively perceived next step for an organisation still working through ways to define itself, the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) has announced a set of Universal Standards that underpins its philosophy, perhaps the longest mission statement ever issued.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 7 – In an extraordinary move given the significance of the occasion and the media interest worldwide, FIFA have scrapped staging a press conference following next week’s eagerly awaited first full meeting of its new 36-member ruling Council.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 7 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino seems unlikely to face an ethics prosecution over his role in a loan to the Slovenian Football Association while he was UEFA general secretary.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 6 – The Norwegian publication that has run a series of investigative reports into whether Gianni Infantino is fit for FIFA president has thrown up yet more questions about his credentials, this time involving his relationship with new UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 5 – Top leagues from across European football today moved closer to all-out war with UEFA over plans to revamp the Champions League. Urgent talks between the head of the umbrella body for Europe’s leagues and new UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin are due to take place in the next 48 hours with the genuine threat of a free-for-all if the controversial deal favouring Europe’s elite clubs is not modified or scrapped.
By Paul Nicholson
October 5 – “Reform or die, and reform had better happen sooner rather than later,” was the unequivocal, if not evangelical, message from Emanuel Medeiros, CEO of ICSS EUROPE, at the Leaders in Sport conference in London.
October 4 – The Belgian FA has launched an inquiry into allegations that several players in the country’s top league bet on their own matches.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 30 – Issa Hayatou (pictured), the all-powerful, old-school and often controversial ruler of African football who was in temporary charge of FIFA until the election of Gianni Infantino, has won another significant victory in his bid to retain control of the region he has run for the last 28 years.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 29 – Israel is trying to block moves to suspend five Israeli league teams controversially situated in the occupied West Bank, according to local reports.
September 29 – The Association of Football Agents has called for a total reform of the current system in order to tighten it up and make it “globally enforceable” following the revelations in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that have rocked the English game.
By Paul Nicholson
September 28 – The CIES Football Observatory has dug deeper into its transfer spend data of big-5 league clubs to examine where the money is being spent and how far down the football chain it is reaching. The answer is that probably not as far as clubs and leagues would like to pretend.