By Mark Baber
September 12 – China has finished top of the Asian Games medal table every year since 1990, and in the last edition in Guangzhou picked up 199 gold medals – three times as many as runners up South Korea, but Asia’s most populous country remains a rank outsider in the football.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 12 – The president of one of Portugal’s leading clubs has lashed out at Third Party Ownership despite the country being one of those where the practise is commonplace.
September 12 – UEFA has charged the Football Association of Wales (FAW) for a pitch invasion following their late winner in this week’s 2-1 win in Andorra.
By Mark Baber
September 12 – Nike and the Norwegian Football Association have announced a new partnership that sees Nike become the federation’s official apparel sponsor, taking over from Umbro.
September 12 – The symbolic Hull City name change saga that has generated interest way beyond English shores has taken a potentially decisive turn with owner Assem Allam revealing he put the club up for sale several months ago.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 12 – Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre says the club have learned valuable lessons on and off the field in terms of long-term sustainability.
September 12 – The World Football Forum 2014, to be held at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, November 13, has added former Russian footballing legend Aleksei Smertin to the panel discussion on the implications of UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations (FFP). Smertin will be on the panel led by the Chief Executive of Chelsea Football Club, Ron Gourlay. Chelsea were one of the clubs Smertin played for.
By David Owen
September 11 – FIFA plans to dip into its solidarity fund to help three impoverished West African nations – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – stricken by the deadly Ebola virus. The governing body said that at its next finance committee meeting in two weeks’ time on September 25 it would propose using solidarity fund resources to “support the member associations” of these three countries in the fight against the disease.
“C’est bien facile d’être bon, le malaisé c’est d’être juste.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Financial Fair Play has posed football’s regulators with a quandary that Victor Hugo would no doubt quickly have recognised. When making the law it’s dead easy to be good; the hard part is being fair.
By Mark Baber
September 11 – An attempt by the Chris Giwa-faction in Nigeria’s Football Federation (NFF) to hang on to power by appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for a restraint order against FIFA fell at the first hurdle this week.
By Andrew Warshaw in Manchester
September 11 – Three months after discovering that he will lose his position as Asia’s FIFA vice-president, Prince Ali bin Hussein of Jordan has come out fighting by announcing that he will stand for election as a member of FIFA’s executive committee next year.
By Mark Baber
September 11 – The Swedish Football Association (SvFF) announced has reported a case of “suspected bribery” to the police in relation to Jonkopings Sodra’s match against Syrianska on August 25 which Jonkoping won 4-0.
September 11 – The head of FIFA’s Task Force for Women is taking a diplomatic approach to the outcry over the use of synthetic pitches at the next year’s women’s World Cup in Canada.
September 11 – UEFA president Michel Platini has taken a veiled swipe at FIFA’s zero tolerance approach towards racism at the World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 11 – Countries hoping to stage the pan-European Championship finals in 2020 have received mixed news from UEFA’s evaluation panel with the vote just a week away.