By Mark Baber
October 17 – Libya’s most popular football club, Tripoli’s Al-Ahly, have withdrawn in protest from the newly relaunched Libyan Football League after their coach was shot at while at home, players were threatened and star player Mohamed Al-Maghrabi was shot in the arm.
By Mark Baber
October 17 – After failing in a forlorn attempt to get FIFA to make a last minute change to the seeding system, this morning’s FIFA Ranking confirms that France have missed out on being seeded for the decisive World Cup qualifiers, after being ranked 21st in the world on 870 points, just a single place and a single ranking point below Ukraine, who are in 20th place on 871 points and who will be seeded.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 17 – Egypt look set to hang on to their American coach Bob Bradley despite Tuesday’s humiliating 6-1 World Cup playoff first leg defeat to Ghana which all but ends the Pharoahs’ dream of reaching next year’s finals.
Away to Indonesia on October 15, the away round of qualification group matches of the Asian Cup, Team China earned an embarrasing draw, 1:1. Indonesia’s FIFA ranking before the match was 170th.
Funny thing happened again. A week before the match, the President of China, Mr. Xi Jinping, was visiting Indonesia, and made some comments about his beloved game of football: “I hope one day that China and Indonesia could meet in the finals of World Cup,”
As the opening stage of the 2014 World Cup play-offs for Africa ended on Tuesday, another four weeks must pass before knowing, for certain, the quintet that will represent the continent in Brazil.
But Algeria, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and particularly Ghana’s Black Stars, which gave Egypt a surprising 6-1 wallop in Kumasi, will be feeling they are closer to earning their qualification tickets.
Whilst fans were concentrating on the action taking place across the continent,
By Mark Baber
Ocotber 17 – FIFA and the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) have appointed a normalisation committee to take control of the Solomon Islands Football Federation (SIFF) after the federation’s funding was put on hold whilst an investigation looks into poor accounting by the federation’s administrators.
By Gareth Messenger
October 17 – Barcelona president Sandro Rosell has backed his decision to start charging under-sevens for entrance to games at the Camp Nou.
October 17 – Switzerland’s meteoric rise in football’s world rankings has been rewarded with the central European country being seeded for next year’s World Cup finals.
By Andrew Warshaw
17 October – Amidst all the hullaballoo over the 2022 Qatar World Cup, a younger version of football’s biggest global jamboree was set to begin in the Gulf today (Thursday), almost unnoticed outside the region itself. The under-17 World Cup is being staged in six venues by one of Qatar’s neighbours, the United Arab Emirates, with little controversy and hardly any hot air – metaphorically speaking.
October 16 – The landmark CONCACAF summit in the Cayman Islands next week (October 21-22) will kick off with an address by South African freedom fighter and football supporter Tokyo Sexwale (pictured) at a dinner hosted by president Jeffrey Webb.
Apologies to those whose national football teams face a nerve wracking World Cup play-off.
And to those who dreams of reaching Brazil 2014 are already over.
For I’d like to talk about qualification. As in achieving it, sealing the deal.
As an Al Jazeera Correspondent I must be neutral, yet all around me in England there has been the agony, the pain, then the relief at securing a place in the finals.
By Mark Baber
October 16 – Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has revealed that a decision will be made on which project gets the go ahead for the planned refurbishment of the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu by the end of October, with the club now looking to find a sponsor to add their name to the stadium.
By Mark Baber
October 16 – Manchester United, and their official logistics partner DHL, are to tour the Premier League Trophy to 31 destinations in 24 cities worldwide in the coming months to celebrate last season’s Premier League triumph.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 16 – The World Cup qualifying programme in Europe reached a nail-biting conclusion Tuesday night as Bosnia-Herzegovina celebrated reaching their first finals as an independent nation, beating Lithuania 1-0 to finish top of their group.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 16 – Inter Milan, winners of 18 Italian league titles, have become the latest iconic European club to be taken over by foreign investors. A trio of Indonesian businessmen led by media tycoon Erick Thohir have bought a 70% stake in the Serie A giants.