By David Gold
August 8 – A rift between the Italian league and players in Serie A has widened after all 20 captains of top flight teams signed a letter demanding that a dispute over a new collective player rights deal be resolved before the season starts, as the threat of a players strike increases.
By David Gold
August 7 – Zhemchuzhina Sochi are the latest professional Russian league club to fold as a result of financial difficulties, and will now drop out of the first division.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 5 – Mohamed Bin Hammam, banned for life for his role in the cash-for-votes bribery scandal, has hit out at the length of time it is taking FIFA to explain exactly what he has done wrong.
By David Gold
August 5 – France’s former national team coach Raymond Domenech has agreed a €975,000 (£850,000/$1.4 million) compensation deal with the French Football Federation (FFF), bringing to an end the dispute following his sacking after the disastrous World Cup campaign in South Africa last year.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 4 – The war of words between club and country continued today when the head of the European Club Association (ECA), Karl Heinze Rummenigge (pictured), suggested Sepp Blatter was no longer fit to run FIFA.
By David Gold
August 4 – Issa Hayatou, President of the African Football Confederation (CAF), has urged football authorities across the continent to organise charity games in aid of the victims of the famine plaguing the Horn of Africa.
By David Gold
August 4 – When Barack Obama gets around to opening his birthday cards, he will be finding a message of support from FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who wrote to the United States President, hailing him as a “visionary leader and unifier”.
By Emily Goddard
August 4 – PROSKE sports has appointed Christian Fuchs as an account director for its client UEFA TOP sponsor Coca-Cola, with a primary focus on supporting the hospitality and ticketing management programmes at Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.
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Sepp Blatter always complains that he is a leader who is not as powerful as his title of FIFA President may suggest. For a start, he is in the odd position that he cannot choose his own cabinet, something that Barack Obama or David Cameron would find intolerable.
So Blatter’s cabinet, the FIFA Executive Committee, are elected by the Confederations and foisted on him. There is nothing Blatter can do about that. He has to live with their choices.
By David Gold
August 3 – AC Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani (pictured) has warned that Italian clubs need to renovate or build new stadiums to avoid falling behind France in UEFA’s coefficient rankings, after having dropped below Germany’s Bundesliga last season.
By David Gold
August 2 – FIFA has warned the Venezuelan Government against the creation of a new “Sports Justice Commission”, which could cause a dispute with both world football’s governing body and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
By David Gold
August 2 – Argentina has dropped plans to merge their top two divisions into a 38 team national championship from 2012 after the Argentine Football Association (AFA) announced that it has “suspended consideration of the proposal”.
By David Gold
August 2 – FIFA has published a letter on its website attacking British politicians, with secretary general Jerome Valcke claiming that they should “act and speak on facts and not on unsubstantiated headlines”.
The giant makeshift marquees at the swish Marina da Glória where the 2014 qualifying draw took place have been pulled down and all delegates have now left town. Rio is back to normal daily life. But that, of course, still means a national obsession with football.
Bold and brassy, sexy and spontaneous, there is little doubt that in terms of colour and excitement, this country will put on a show in three years’
By Andrew Warshaw in Rio de Janeiro
July 31 – UEFA President Michel Platini has warned European football’s giants not to set up a breakaway league or risk being thrown out of all competitions.