Mexico 1 Honduras 0
July 2 – The question on the lips of pundits and fans at Levi Stadium, Santa Clara, was “would tonight be business as usual or unusual business?” as Mexico and Honduras met for the right to face the United States in the Concacaf Gold Cup Final on Sunday in Houston.
Spain 5 Portugal 0
July 3 – With an imperious display, world champions Spain waltzed past neighbours Portugal at the Wankdorff Stadion in Bern, winning 5-0 to back up their status as tournament favourites.
By Tom Parsons
November 19 – West Ham forward Carlton Cole has become involved in an unusual twitter rant… against his own club!
By Paul Nicholson
November 19 – Hull City AFC supporters are not giving up their fight to retain their name in the face insistent owner Assem Allam’s (pictured) repeated statements that he will change the club’s name to Hull Tigers.
November 19 – NYCFC, the new New York City MLS franchise scheduled to start play in the 2015 season, is increasing its marketing presence and trading on the group’s assets with a new video featuring Manchester City players in New York.
By Paul Nicholson
November 19 – One of Europe’s most iconic clubs is undergoing a revolution, Viennese style. SK Rapid, better known to most European fans as Rapid Vienna, has a new president, plans for a new stadium and is targeting a new era as one of Europe’s top clubs in the world’s best city to live in according to Mercer’s latest Quality of Living ranking.
By Andrew Warshaw
November 19 – President Sepp Blatter’s personal choice as the first elected female member of his executive committee has been ousted by her own federation after nine years in charge. Lydia Nsekera, elected to FIFA’s inner sanctum amid considerable pomp at this year’s Congress in Mauritius, has been replaced as head of the Burundi football association, an untimely blow to global efforts to increase the influence of women football administrators.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent, in Doha
November 19 – Almost three years after steering Qatar towards arguably the greatest upset in World Cup bidding history, Hassan Al Thawadi is still a driven man. Whilst hardly a week goes by without some new development raising questions over Qatar’s suitability to stage the 2022 tournament, the organising chief bullishly refuses to let himself get distracted, tackling the negativism head-on whilst remaining focussed on the job at hand.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
November 18 – CSKA Moscow owner Yevgeni Giner (pictured) is reportedly in talks with Ales Rebicek, owner of Slavia Prague, to buy the Czech football club.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
November 18 – Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organisers have agreed to maintain an ongoing dialogue with Amnesty International in the wake of the most explosive report to date into workers’ rights violations in the country.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
November 18 – Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organisers admit they are becoming “deeply frustrated” by constant negative headlines over whether the country deserves to stage the tournament but will not let all the adverse publicity sidetrack them.
By Paul Nicholson
November 18 – The Club World Cup scheduled for Marrakech and Agadir 11-21 December will not be disrupted by an FIFA Emergency Committee ruling that the governing body will not recognise the elections that were held by the Moroccan Football Association (FRMF) on 10 November 2013.
The plight of journeyman footballer Zahir Belounis and his desperate appeal to be paid what he’s owed and leave Qatar could hardly have come at a more inopportune time for the 2022 World Cup organisers.
Just as the Qataris were proudly unveiling details of the design and construction for the first of their state-of-the-art stadia for the finals in nine years’ time, so all the pomp and backslapping co-incided with yet more adverse publicity about a case which human rights organisations are using as an example of the restrictive kafala employment system that prevents foreign workers leaving the country until being “released”
By Andrew Warshaw
November 18 – Frustrated with South Africa’s continual refusal to put its own house in order, FIFA’s ethics committee prosecutor Michael Garcia has opened an investigation into allegations of match-fixing in friendlies in the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup.
“Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them,” E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
When, four seasons ago, so many Manchester United fans adopted green and gold, the colours of their club’s first-ever kit, it was as a symbol of peaceful protest against the ownership of the Glazer family.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
November 17 – Amnesty International has urged FIFA to take a tougher line over the plight of migrant workers in Qatar as a damning new report highlights widespread abuse of human rights in the country that is preparing to stage the 2022 World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw in Doha
November 16 – Their World Cup bid campaign message, still seen emblazoned across parts of the capital even though it is now almost three years after the vote, was ‘Expect Amazing’. Having achieved their goal of being awarded the event, Qatar’s 2022 organisers have come up with a new, updated logo, ‘Expect Delivery’. Nine years out from hosting the tournament, officials today unveiled their first stadium design and promised to make sure the workers who construct it will be safe from injury.