If you scored a match winning goal at the highest league level in your country how would you react? With a slice of pizza behind the goal?
You may have seen Dominic Oduru of Columbus Crew do just that in a match last year against Chicago Fire, provided by the club’s ‘official’ pizza provider. Thank goodness he hit the target otherwise that pizza may have gone to waste. What company was it? Let’s not go there,
By Andrew Warshaw
January 30 – Manchester City may have surged to the top of the English Premier League but are the Abu Dhabi-backed big-spenders in danger of breaching UEFA’s financial fair play (FFP) rules in order to achieve their ambitions?
January 30 – Four Slovakian league players have been given worldwide bans by FIFA for their involvement in match-fixing this season.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
January 30 – In a bid to increase the club’s following in various parts of Poland, Legia Warsaw has launched a countrywide advertising campaign employing billboards, press and the internet. But the campaign may have backfired after fans of other clubs took insult at the ads appearing in the their cities.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 30 – The Italian football federation has kicked third division club Nocerina out of the division as punishment for their players faking injury.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 30 – South African football has been given a major boost to its damaged reputation on and off the pitch by signing a wide-ranging, five-year sponsorship deal with Nike.
By Alexander Krassimirov
January 30 – Seven Fenerbahce fans were detained following their teams’ Spor Toto Super League game against Konyaspor on 27 January. More than a dozen fans were taken to the police office in the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium after the game. After interviews, police detained seven of the fans, taking them to a nearby police station.
January 30 – The Qatar-based International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS), whose remit is becoming increasingly relevant in terms of both match-fixing and stadium safety, has announced a partnership with Germany’s football league to enhance operations at event venues round the world,
January 29 – While attention and nervousness surround preparations and fast-approaching deadlines for the 2014 Brazil World Cup, the Russians are more quietly and methodically making their preparations for 2018.
January 29 – Third party ownership of footballers’ economic rights is a hot issue that raises questions of integrity, money being siphoned out the game, and unbalancing of the football market. The big European nations generally hate it, the South Americans, in particular, embrace it. Lawyer Pāvels Tjusevs examines the business and draws some uncomfortable conclusions for football.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
January 29 – Just over a week after announcing he was running for FIFA president, Jerome Champagne has given the strongest hint yet that he will withdraw rather than stand against Sepp Blatter – and that he would readily accept a new position under his former boss if he fails to land the top job.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 29 – The English Premier League maybe the most watched televised league globally but German football is still the best attended and continues to set an example when it comes to economic stability and collective responsibility.
By Paul Nicholson
January 29 – The President of the Polish Football Association, Zbigniew Boniek, has joined the Supervisory board of Poland’s Ekstraklasa, the country’s top league.
By Paul Nicholson
January 29 – The first diversity training sessions have been held in St Lucia as part of the CONCACAF grassroots development programme. The confederation plan is to include similar sessions in future grassroots and similar development courses.
January 29 – The local organising committee for the 2022 World Cup has been formally activated following a shake-up of the board of the directors that, until now, had been known as the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee.