By Andrew Warshaw
August 5 – The World Cup may be a month old but surprise quarterfinalists Costa Rica, with just 4.3 million inhabitants, are far from resting on their laurels after disproving more than a few myths about being one of the underdogs in Brazil.
August 5 – The new season of European club competition may have only just started but already discrimination by fans has led to UEFA’s disciplinary authorities being called into action.
August 5 – Italian Serie A soccer champions Juventus have renewed their long-running deal with carmaker Fiat. The Turin-based company, who have long been inextricably linked with Juve, has agreed a six-year extension to its shirt sponsorship deal which will now run until the end of the 2020/21 season.
By Paul Nicholson
August 5 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has reacted quickly to comments coming from Russian construction company Stroitransgaz, owned by Gennadiy Timchenko, which said that the company would pull out of the build of the stadiums in Volgograd and in Nizhniy Novgorod if the government did not increase the budget available.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 5 – FIFA President Sepp Blatter is a past master at wooing his audience depending on where his schedule takes him, so it was little surprise that he caught the imagination of the Canadian media on the eve of the under-20 women’s World Cup that is due to start today.
August 5 – With existing and emerging threats to sport on the increase, Securing Sport, the international conference organised by Qatar-based integrity watchdog the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) is being staged in London for the first time.
Top football clubs are different to other businesses. Whereas most companies exist to generate wealth for their shareholders, football clubs must balance this against the pursuit of trophies. Of course, the two aims are linked, or can be: mountains of silverware will increase a club’s popularity, tending to make it more valuable and, hence, to enable its owners, should they so choose, to sell it at a profit.
August 5 – The Ghanaian fans who were seeking asylum in Brazil after the world cup have been granted an initial one-year stay in the country.
By Ben Nicholson
August 5 – This past weekend saw a major breakthrough for soccer in the USA. Average attendance figures for the ten professional soccer matches of the weekend was higher than the average attendance figures for the 15 Major League Baseball games over the same period.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 5 – Corinne Diacre became the first woman to coach a men’s professional team in a competitive match in a major European country on Monday but ended up on the losing side as Clermont Foot narrowly went down 2-1 at Brest in the French second division.
By Ben Nicholson
August 5 – The bidding war for the final expansion team spots in the MLS has intensified further as the previously thought long shot Sacramento has raised eyebrows with a big money investor.
August 5 – Greece’s World Cup coach Fernando Santos has been handed an eight match international ban by FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee. The Portuguese was sent off after extra time in the World Cup knockout game against Costa Rica.
August 4 – UEFA has opened an investigation into the crowd trouble that marred last week’s Champions League qualifier between Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and Copenhagen in Ukraine.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 4 – Strict new betting rules previously announced by English football authorities to prevent players, managers, club employees and match officials from gambling on any football-related matter worldwide have now come into effect.
August 4 – Luis Suarez will learn later this week whether he can start training with his new club after the Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed it will hear his appeal against his four-month ban for biting at the World Cup on Friday.