January 12 – Amidst all the usual glitz and glamour and the emphasis on business as usual, two men were conspicuous by their absence at the annual Ballon d’Or award ceremony on Monday night.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 12 – FIFA presidential candidate Tokyo Sexwale says Sepp Blatter’s misconduct should be put into perspective and has praised the work of the outgoing veteran Swiss, currently fighting his eight-year ban.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 11 – From day one he has protested his innocence but the net appears to be closing in on Thailand’s controversial former FIFA executive committee member Worawi Makudi.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 11 – Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have been given the all-clear to launch appeals against their eight-year bans after FIFA’s ethics committee sent them full written reasons for the judgements.
By Samindra Kunti
January 8 – South American football powerhouses Argentina and Uruguay will jointly bid to co-host the 2030 FIFA World Cup. State presidents Mauricio Macri (Argentina) and Tabare Vazquez (Uruguay) made the announcement yesterday at a press conference. Uruguay hosted the inaugural edition of the tournament in 1930.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 8 – The 2020 European Championship finals, taking place in 13 venues across the Continent, looks set to become the first major tournament to embrace video replays, arguably the most ground-breaking law change in the history of the game.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 9 – The dream is finally over. Faced with the growing realisation that time is running out, Michel Platini, only a few weeks ago odds-on favourite to succeed Sepp Blatter, has been forced to withdraw from the FIFA presidential election.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 7 – FIFA’s ethics committee has opened formal proceedings against Jerome Valcke after investigators recommended a nine-year ban against the organisation’s 55-year-old general secretary.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 6 – Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, the Jordanian royal who has put his reputation on the line by taking a second stab at the FIFA presidency, has warned that if the wrong man is appointed to succeed Sepp Blatter, the organisation faces a catastrophic future.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 6 – Jerome Valcke, the forgotten man in the FIFA corruption scandal who has been out of the game since being relieved of his duties as general-secretary back in October, faces a far longer spell on the sidelines following the recommendation of a nine-year ban by FIFA’s ethics committee.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 5 – He is regarded as an outsider and has been accused of being verbose and too close to his former boss, the currently banned Sepp Blatter. But Jerome Champagne has lost none of his passion or approachability and believes that if football, and FIFA, wants meaningful change and an inclusive future, he is the only presidential candidate who can bring it about.
January 3 – Liberia Football Association chairman Musa Bility (pictured) has failed to overturn his exclusion from February’s FIFA presidential election. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed Bility’s attempt to throw out the ruling imposed by FIFA’s Ad hoc Electoral Committee.
By Paul Nicholson
December 30 – Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa has launched his FIFA presidential campaign platform formally with a website outlining his election manifesto.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 30 – The US sports television network ESPN has invited all five candidates in FIFA’s presidential election to participate in a round-table debate on how they would solve the scandal-hit organisation’s problems.
December 30 – Rafael Esquivel, one of the original ‘Zurich Seven’ arrested last May in the first crackdown by the US Justice Department on FIFA-related corruption, is to remain in custody in Switzerland after losing his latest request to be allowed to be held under house arrest.