By Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – UEFA has formally outlined how its new Nations League competition – being brought in to replace meaningless friendlies and featuring promotion and relegation – will work.
By Paul Nicholson and Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – With the final preparations taking place for the draw for Women’s World Cup Canada 2015, to be held in Ottawa tomorrow, the lawyer representing the group of players campaigning for matches to be switched from artificial turf to natural grass has accused FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke of reneging on a pledge to discuss the issue with the players.
December 5 – Argentine football has been stunned by another shocking fatal tragedy after a player was brutally attacked. Franco Nieto (pictured), captain of regional club Tiro Federal was struck on the head following a third-tier match against rivals Chacarita Juniors in the town of Aimogasta, in north-west Argentina.
December 5 – Having backed away from goal-line technology because of the costs involved, Germany’s Bundesliga has decided the time is right to implement its introduction to settle contentious decisions over whether the ball has crossed the line.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – Clearly exasperated that months of talks failed to achieve the hoped-for breakthrough, UEFA have taken the ultimate step of banning clubs in the annexed Crimea region of Ukraine from playing in any Russian-organised football competitions.
By David Owen
December 5 – Any last flickering prospect of a re-run of the race for the 2022 Winter Olympics, in a move that could conceivably have sparked the emergence of a southern hemisphere candidate and freed up the January-February time-slot for the FIFA World Cup, has been snuffed out by the announcement of a lucrative new TV deal by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
December 5 – With the European transfer window opening January 1, the CIES Football Observatory has updated its online calculator that gives a transfer value to players in the ‘Big-5’ European leagues; England’s Premier League, France’s Ligue 1, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s Primera.
By David Owen
December 4 – A halving in the number of football staff employed by the club has helped Manchester City to report much-reduced annual losses and added to the growing impression that 2013-14 will bring a marked improvement in Premier League club finances.
By Samindra Kunti
December 4 – Belgian top clubs are fearing an exodus of their homegrown talent after FIFA reduced the international training compensation from €75,000 to €10,000 a year for players aged 12 to 15 in the summer.
December 4 – Scottish champions Celtic are prepared to go all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in their appeal against Bulgarian Aleksandar Tonev’s racism charge.
December 4 – A Bulgarian player who tried to strike a referee with a bottle after being sent off has been banned for 10 games by his country’s football association.
December 4 – Valencia have promised to ban for life the fan who threw a plastic bottle that struck Lionel Messi on the head – if the club can ever discover who the culprit was.
By Mark Baber
December 4 – Hopes the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) Electoral Appeals’ Committee would return football in the country to at least a semblance of rational rule-based administration were dashed on Wednesday as members of the committee broke ranks with their Chairman, Barrister Okey Ajunwa, failing to publish a report but signing a press statement “deciding” to dismiss all appeals against the highly disputed elections of September 30 which brought the current leadership of the NFF to power.
December 4 – David Beckham has been urged by Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber to start making firm progress over establishing his Miami-based franchise.
By Paul Nicholson
December 4 – Success on the pitch can sometimes be a fickle financial master in football, but Burnley’s loss of £7.6 million for the year to June 2014 is looking like value-for-money. The Premier League new boys actually announced a £300,000 profit for their promotion season. But when you add in staff bonuses of £7.9 million due on elevation to England’s top flight, the profit becomes a £7.6 million loss.