July 8 – Singapore, frequently cited as being the operating centre of Asia’s match-fixing scourge, becomes the hub of the region for more positive reasons next week when it hosts a series of workshops delivered by the English Premier League to help the sport develop off the field.
July 8 – Former German president Christian Wulff has again rejected allegations by Sepp Blatter that he tried to influence proceedings ahead of Qatar being selected to stage the 2022 World Cup.
July 8 – Third division Spanish team CD Guadalajara has demonstrated its support of the LGBT movement in its newly unveiled home kit. A rainbow stripe runs down the center of the purple shirt, in aim of challenging social injustices such as homophobia.
July 8 – Gold Cup sponsor Allstate Insurance is activating its partnership with the additional moniker as the Official Protector of the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup Trophy. The activation will see Allstate take the Gold Cup Trophy on a seven-city tour across the US during the tournament which kicked off last night in Texas with a win for the US over Honduras.
By Paul Nicholson
July 8 – CONCACAF have ended their representation agreement with embattled marketing agency Traffic Sports USA with immediate effect. The announcement was made on the opening day of the Gold Cup, an event that Traffic owned exclusive rights to and had sold all of the current sponsorships for.
By David Owen
July 8 – Football is generally a low-scoring game, but it is not invariably so. Arbroath 36 Bon Accord 0 in September 1885 in the Scottish Cup is one well-known counter-example that springs to mind. Australia 31 American Samoa 0 in April 2001 in a World Cup qualifier is another.
By Paul Nicholson
July 7 – TV viewing figures from the US for Sunday’s Women’s World Cup final are reporting a stunning picture for soccer in the country and for the women’s game in general.
By Mark Baber
July 7 – CONCACAF have announced that all tickets have been sold for the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup doubleheader in Dallas this evening which kicks off at the 20,500 capacity Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas.
July 7 – The money gap when compared to the men may still be huge but FIFA’s decision to stage the women’s World Cup in Canada and increase the finalists to 24 teams certainly paid off in terms of crowds and global interest – and, on the field, in terms of excitement.
July 7 – FIFA has ordered Yemen to default a World Cup qualifying match against North Korea for fielding a player who was technically banned. Yemen, officially the home side for the match that was played in Qatar, lost 1-0 on June 11.
Few deals tell us as much about what football was, and what it is becoming, as the recent transaction that has seen a second division club based in the Eastern French town of Montbéliard (population: about 26,000) change hands for a reported €7 million.
By Paul Nicholson
July 7 – CONCACAF has published a ‘Reform Framework’ as the confederation covering North and Central America and the Caribbean seeks for the second time in four years to put in a place a robust governance and management structure that will take football in the region forward.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 6 – Harold Mayne-Nicholls, who led the FIFA technical inspection team that evaluated the credentials of all nine candidates for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, has been banned from all football activities for seven years in what many will construe as the start of a new crackdown by world football’s governing body in the light of the corruption scandal that has rocked the organisation and led to Sepp Blatter’s decision to stand down as president.
July 6 – As the United States celebrated their first women’s World Cup triumph since 1999 amid euphoric scenes in Vancouver following their 5-2 thrashing of Japan, attention immediately turned to the 2026 men’s version which is due to be CONCACAF’s turn.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 6 – In a break with 50 years of tradition, football’s international players’ union FIFPro is opening its doors to female members to give women players a stronger voice.