By Andrew Warshaw
January 29 – Four of the five candidates for the FIFA presidency are heading to Qatar for weekend meetings, with one of them, South African Tokyo Sexwale, suggesting the horse-trading and unofficial election pacts are in full swing ahead of the February 26 ballot even though all of the contenders are keeping any election deals firmly under wraps.
January 29 – Start-up Dutch firm SciSports has raised €1.35 million to develop its BallJames three-dimensional pixel technology that is used to enhance football data analysis.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 29 – Gianni Infantino appears to have stolen a march on his rival candidates for the FIFA presidency by gaining the support of South American federations who comprise 10 of the 209 voting countries.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 29 – Swiss prosecutors say they have been given crucial information by a whisteblower in the criminal investigation of suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter – and into FIFA itself.
January 29 – English football’s outspoken chairman Greg Dyke will not seek re-election when his current term ends in June because of a battle over proposed reforms.
January 28 – Premier League commercial giant Manchester United has announced a new partnerhip in drinks brank YOU.C1000, which becomes the club’s Official Isotonic Drinks Partner in Indonesia.
January 28 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has beefed up its agreement with betting fraud prevention and detection specialists Sportradar, singing a two-year deal that will increase the number of games monitored to more than 4,500, a huge increase on the 300 games in the previous deal.
By Mark Baber
January 28 – Vitaly Mutko, the Russian Sports Minister and Russian Football Union (RFU) President, has said a new $2.5-3.8 million sponsorship contract is about to be signed for the cash-strapped RFU, and that the union is now getting its finances in order.
January 28 – Italian police have seized assets from 58 players, agents and club executives worth more than €12 million as part of huge crackdown into alleged systematic tax evasion in the country’s top two divisions.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 28 – With FIFA mired in its worst ever corruption scandal, presidential candidate Jerome Champagne has stirred up the debate by alleging UEFA has been equally guilty of wrongdoing but has got away with it.
By David Owen
January 27 – Roman Abramovic’s Chelsea look set to be the latest beneficiaries of the tide of Chinese money washing into European football. The likely transfer of Brazilian midfielder Ramires to Jiangsu Suning, a Chinese Super League club based in Nanjing, the former capital city, should provide a handy boost to the London side’s profits in 2015-16.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 28 – European parliamentarians have accused FIFA’s presidential candidates of scoring a spectacular own goal after four of them declined to take part in Wednesday’s planned televised debate in Brussels which ultimately collapsed.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 27 – In what can only be described as a state of utter confusion, a planned debate on the future of FIFA, which had already descended into farce, was watered down still further today just hours before it was due to take place.
By Mark Baber
January 27 – Alejandro Dominguez of Paraguay was elected unopposed as president of CONMEBOL, the governing body of South American football, after Wilmar Valdez of Uruguay withdrew his candidacy.
January 27 – The 2022 World Cup should be handed directly to the United States if Qatar is stripped of hosting the tournament, according to FIFA presidential outsider Jerome Champagne.