By Mark Baber
May 1 – NBA player Jason Collins this week became the first active competitor in a major American professional sport to announce he is gay, shining the spotlight on homophobia in football around the world, as we approach Friday’s 16th anniversary of the tragic suicide of Justin Fashanu (pictured), Britain’s first £1m black footballer and still the only prominent player to come out as gay to date.
By Mark Baber
May 1 – FIFA have given clearance to Malawi to play their two upcoming 2014 World Cup qualifiers, against Namibia and Kenya, at the Kamuzu Stadium in Blantyre, following an inspection by Adnan El Guindy on April 21.
By John Duerden in Kuala Lumpur
May 1 – UEFA President Michel Platini has called for Asia to put an end to its in-fighting and move forward starting with Thursday’s vote to elect a new president of the Asian Football Confederation.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
May 1 – Claims and counter-claims, conspiracy theories bouncing back and forth, all manner of dirty tricks allegations – and even FIFA intervention. Unity, what unity?
By John Duerden in Kuala Lumpur
May 1 – Outsider Hafiz Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia as expected quit the race to become the next president of the Asian Football Confederation today, just hours after exclusively revealing to InsideWorldFootball that he was on the verge of pulling out of the running.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
May 1 – The timing could hardly be worse. On the eve of the vote to clean up its act, Asian football has been rocked by yet another embarrassing scandal after Sri Lanka’s Vernon Manilal Fernando, one of the continent’s most powerful administrators, was kicked out of FIFA for eight years over unspecified unethical wrongdoing.
By Paul Nicholson, Editor in chief
May 1 – A third human rights organisation has written to FIFA president Sepp Blatter asking him to refer Asian Football Confederation presidential candidate Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain to FIFA’s ethics committee.
I had initially planned to do a piece on the parlous state of Cameroonian football, after the humiliating failure of the not-so-Indomitable Lions, four-time champions of the continent, to qualify for the last two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments.
But, when a nosey-parker journalist – me, in this case – ends up in the news, rather than being in the preferred position of reporting it, one is left with no choice than to make the proverbial lemonade out of lemons.
FIFA’s media office sent the invitation to media representatives twice. Obviously, the international football federation wanted to make sure that numerous journalists attend the event. On Twitter, FIFA President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter announced a “hugely exciting major project”. Only a few minutes later, he revealed he was talking about the FIFA Museum in Zurich.
The campaign worked well, and in front of numerous cameras and microphones Blatter could tell many journalists about his dream and his gift to the “sports city Zurich”.
By Paul Nicholson
April 30 – The composition of FIFA’s anti-racism taskforce is taking shape and although not yet officially announced, it includes a number of high profile and perhaps unexpected appointments from across a range of football activity.
By Tom Parsons
April 30 – Henning Berg, the former Blackburn manager, has been awarded £2.25m in compensation from the Championship side after winning his claim against the club in court yesterday.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
April 30 – Joao Havelange, who controlled FIFA for 24 years as he stalked the corridors of power, has resigned as honorary president after being officially denounced for having taken bribes while running the organisation. In a move that will reverberate through football’s world governing body and focus even more public interest and attention on FIFA’s reform process, the veteran Brazilian, now 97, quit what was very much a ceremonial role –
April 30 – One and a half million happy German football fans watched the first round of the Champions League semi-finals in Sky Sports Bars. The figure includes 1.02 million viewers who watched the victory of FC Bayern over Barcelona.
By Mark Baber
April 30 – Thailand’s broadcast regulator has ruled that all 64 matches of the 2014 World Cup finals must be televised over free-TV channels. The ruling comes as a blow to Thai pay channel RS Inc which holds the rights.
By John Duerden in Kuala Lumpur
April 30 – Yousuf Al-Serkal has not only labelled Bahraini rival Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa over-confident for predicting that he could win Thursday’s Asian Football Confederation presidential election in the first-round of voting but the head of the United Arab Emirates FA hinted to Inside World Football that he could receive help from other candidates in subsequent rounds.