By Matt Scott
June 5 – English Football League clubs will today vote on a new insolvency policy that, if approved, will overhaul the way administrations are dealt with in the English lower leagues.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 5 – In what is becoming open season time for FIFA’s secrets to see the light of day, a new saga connected with federation money and sharp negotiation has suddenly hit the headlines, this time concerning one the World Cup’s most notorious injustices.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – South Africa’s 2010 World Cup boss Danny Jordaan (pictured) is back in the firing line over the infamous $10 million which United States prosecutors allege was a bribe to secure the country the showpiece tournament and which South Africa’s government counters was a perfectly above board World Cup legacy payment.
Let’s distinguish between the highly unlikely and the reality; let’s separate the hyberbole from the facts. Sepp Blatter made the right decision to announce he would be stepping down no matter how upset his legions of supporters in Africa and elsewhere might be. Root and branch reform is now needed at FIFA more than ever to eradicate the stench of rampant corruption.
By Samindra Kunti
June 5 – CBF president Marco Polo Del Nero is expected to resign during an extraordinary general assembly next week as the crisis deepens in Brazilian football.
By Mark Baber
June 5 – Following the arrest of its former president Rafael Esquivel in Switzerland, military intelligence raided the headquarters of the Federación Venezolana de Fútbol (FVF).
June 5 – The battle against betting related match fixing is seeing a rapid uptake in stakeholders looking for ways to combine resource and intelligence to control what is probably the biggest threat to the sporting integrity of the game. The latest information sharing agreement is between the European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol, have linked up with Sportradar’s betting security division.
We all know how the US Justice Department has moved the tectonic plates of FIFA. Yet the next few months, until the elective Congress meets to decide a new President, could also see major changes in FIFA and if Blatter gets his way these changes will not be very palatable to the Europeans and, in particular, the British. Indeed this could prove to be the most important period in FIFA’s history, even more important than the immediate post war years when a nearly bankrupt FIFA,
June 4 – Premier League Liverpool have added a fourth date to their pre-season tour which will now start in Thailand, against the True All Stars, on July 14. The team will then move on to play two fixtures in Australia, before stopping off in Malaysia on the return leg.
By Mark Baber
June 4 – The worldwide focus on football corruption, and especially the nexus between sports marketing companies and corrupt football federation officials, has created an atmosphere in which Kenya Football Federation (FKF) president Sam Nyamweya’s position looks increasingly precarious.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 4 – Another explosive revelation in the FIFA corruption scandal has shamed world football with the admission by high-profile whistleblower Chuck Blazer, the former CONCACAF general secretary, that he facilitated or took kickbacks over the award of the 1998 and 2010 World Cups.
June 4 – With the net tightening around him after being arrested and bailed for his alleged role in the ongoing FIFA corruption scandal, Jack Warner has taken to the airwaves in his native Trinidad to say he now fears for his life.
“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
There is something fundamental about the allegations in this FIFA crisis that recalls Dostoyevsky’s anti-hero Raskolnikov. Not a naturally vicious man, it was an intellectual compulsion that drove him to commit murder. He convinced himself that his crime would be justified due to his intellectual brilliance. As a virtuoso student,
By Mark Baber
June 4 – Barcelona has signed a wide-ranging partnership agreement with leading tyre brand Lassa, of Brisa (a joint venture of Turkey’s Sabancı Holding and Bridgestone) worth a reported €21.6 million ($24 million). As well as making Lassa the title sponsor of Barcelona’s indoor sports teams (Basketball, Handball, Futsal and Roller Hockey) which will be known by the name ‘FC Barcelona Lassa’ until 30 June 2019, the agreement sees the Turkey based company become an Official Partner of the Club and Lassa become the club’s official tyre.
By David Owen
June 4 – English Premier League clubs achieved their first aggregate pre-tax profit for 15 years in 2013-14, as lucrative new broadcasting deals combined with more effective cost control to spark a remarkable financial turnaround.