By Paul Nicholson
February 5 – The scale of the financial commitment the Qataris are making in providing in-country infrastructure as it builds towards the 2022 World Cup was made clear again yesterday with $205 billion to be spent in the period up to 2018, according to a senior figure at the state’s largest bank.
By Paul Nicholson
February 5 – Israeli technology specialist Evento have signed a deal with Kroenke Sports Entertainment to launch its SitNearMe social media ticketing application for Kroenke’s sports francjsies including MLS team and the Colorado Rapids.
Not many games whet the appetite quite as much as Barcelona vs Manchester City, in the Champions League this month.
This column recently outlined why an important era is approaching for the Catalan club as their dominant decade gives way to uncertainty. Can they remain at the very top when clubs fuelled by petrodollars are starting to accelerate?
Barcelona got past Paris St Germain last season but the French club with the Qatari funding weren’t yet up to full speed.
“Just arrived in Sochi,” Joseph Blatter tweeted on Tuesday. “Looking forward to meeting my friends and colleagues from the Olympic community before Sochi 2014.”
The FIFA President is an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member. So he will attend the IOC Session that precedes the Winter Olympics, the first to be chaired by Thomas Bach, the recently-elected IOC President.
There will no doubt also be opportunities to catch up with Russian officials,
By Andrew Warshaw
February 5 – FIFA and World Cup organisers will be breathing a lot more easily after Cape Verde lost their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over being expelled from World Cup qualifying – in the process avoiding potential chaos next summer.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 5 – In another alarming example of how matchfixing is blighting Asian football, Malaysian authorities have found an entire lower league team guilty of manipulating games.
By David Owen
February 5 – Yet more US investment is flowing into European football, with the announcement that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) has forged a strategic partnership with Hertha BSC of the German Bundesliga.
February 5 – FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke says all Brazil’s World Cup stadia, most notably Curitiba, will be completed by April even though that is only two months before the start of the tournament.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 5 – Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who heads the European Club Association representing the interests of more than 200 clubs across the Continent, has urged UEFA to crack down on any big spenders who breach financial fair play regulations.
February 5 – Croatian playing legend and now president of the Croatian Football Association, Davor Šuker, is in the Caribbean visiting the Turks and Caicos Islands this weekend. The trip follows an initial approach from the Croatians to the Turks and Caicos Islands last December offering assistance and seeking to build a stronger relationship with the federation.
February 4 – FIFA believe they are making progress in an effort to break the footballing impasse between Israel and Palestine and improve the long-term problem of access for officials, competitors and equipment to and from the latter.
February 4 – The Football Conference, which organises the fifth and sixth tiers of English football across three divisions, is looking for a title sponsor following the decision by current sponsor Skrill, to finish its relationship with the league at the end of the year.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 4 – Football’s law-makers are to study the idea of video replays, a controversial topic the FIFA hierarchy has long pledged will not be introduced as an addition to goal-line technology.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 4 – The comedian who invented the infamous Nazi-style gesture that led to former French international Nicolas Anelka being charged by English football authorities has been barred from entering Britain.
February 4 – The Union of Central American Football (UNCAF) has said that it will play its next championship for national teams, the UNCAF Copa Centroamericana, in the US, most likely 1-13 September 2014, in the FIFA window for international fixtures.