By Andrew Warshaw
October 9 – FIFA’s Asian vice-president Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein has called on the organisation to make Arabic one of its official languages in addition to English, French, German and Spanish. In a wide-ranging statement on a number of issues, Prince Ali said FIFA needed to recognise how many people across the world spoke Arabic as a first language.
By David Owen
October 9 – The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has hinted there may yet be time for the Rio de Janeiro doping control laboratory to win back its accreditation in time for it to handle samples collected at next year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
By Matt Scott
October 9 – Serie A clubs are considering a proposal to sell their TV rights from the 2015-6 to 2020-1 seasons for an up-front €5.49bn (£4.63bn).
Definition:
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry; by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety; or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions. Symptoms of the disorder include excessive washing or cleaning; repeated checking; extreme hoarding; preoccupation with sexual, violent or religious thoughts; relationship-related obsessions; aversion to particular numbers; and nervous rituals, such as opening and closing a door a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 8 – FIFA’s leading corruption buster Michael Garcia has broken his silence over his much-publicised upcoming tour of 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding countries by warning that anyone who breaks an obligation to co-operate with the investigation could face sanctions.
By Mark Baber
October 8 – AC Milan have been fined €50,000 and ordered to play their next Serie A home game, against Udinese, behind closed doors, due to some of their fans chanting “We are not Neapolitans”, at their game against Juventus in Turin on Sunday.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 8 – FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke, charged with sorting out the Qatar 2022 World Cup debacle, has more pressing matters on his hands having returned to Brazil amid uncertainty about whether next year’s hosts will be able to deliver the final six stadiums by the December deadline.
By Mark Baber
October 8 – At a special United Nations event on racism and football on Monday in Geneva, UEFA President Michel Platini gave the keynote speech emphasising UEFA’s fierce determination to fight racism, discrimination and intolerance in football. FIFA delegate Tokyo Sexwale said a new global “barometer of racism” would be set up to help in tackling discrimination.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 8 – The 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster has again burst into controversy with reports that video filmed by police may have been deliberately edited.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 8 – It’s not every day that an official football match is staged in the back garden of the world’s most famous royal residence. In fact it has never happened before.
By Panos Bletsos
October 8 – Driven by sheer love for their club and despite its demise to amateur status in the third tier of the domestic league, AEK fans have once again shown their support by buying more season tickets than any other club in the Greek game – including European contenders Olympiakos Pirea and PAOK.
Languid as a footballer, laid back as a football administrator, Michel Platini has never appeared to be one for grand displays of emotion about anything. Even when captaining the victims of one of football’s greatest-ever injustices, as Germany’s goalkeeper Toni Schumacher put his France team-mate Patrick Battiston into a coma in a World Cup semi-final, Platini confronted the negligent referee with a mild flap of his arms.
But if there is one thing that has got the UEFA president exercised in recent times it is the threat of a breakaway European Super League.
As an autumnal evening sunlight settled over FIFA House in Zurich last Friday and a phalanx of cameramen packed away their equipment after a somewhat anti-climactic Sepp Blatter press conference that focussed almost entirely on Qatar, I found myself humming the lyrics to that 1970s hit, More Questions Than Answers, by Johnny Nash.
Two generations after it was released, I reasoned, one could quite easily apply the title of the reggae ditty to the position we are still in as far as the 2022 World Cup saga is concerned.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 7 – With all the focus on the Qatar 2022 World Cup, a number of other ongoing issues went relatively unreported following FIFA’s executive committee in Zurich last week, not least the announcement that Mark Pieth (pictured), the Swiss governance expert appointed two years ago to make recommendations for change, would be terminating his association with FIFA at the end of this year, by mutual agreement.
By Mark Baber
October 7 – With the Hyundai A-League season starting on Friday, Football Federation Australia forecasts a profit for its activities in the 2014 financial year due to an increase in broadcasting revenue and sponsorship.