By Samindra Kunti
December 4 – Belgian top clubs are fearing an exodus of their homegrown talent after FIFA reduced the international training compensation from €75,000 to €10,000 a year for players aged 12 to 15 in the summer.
December 4 – Scottish champions Celtic are prepared to go all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in their appeal against Bulgarian Aleksandar Tonev’s racism charge.
December 4 – A Bulgarian player who tried to strike a referee with a bottle after being sent off has been banned for 10 games by his country’s football association.
December 4 – Valencia have promised to ban for life the fan who threw a plastic bottle that struck Lionel Messi on the head – if the club can ever discover who the culprit was.
By Mark Baber
December 4 – Hopes the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) Electoral Appeals’ Committee would return football in the country to at least a semblance of rational rule-based administration were dashed on Wednesday as members of the committee broke ranks with their Chairman, Barrister Okey Ajunwa, failing to publish a report but signing a press statement “deciding” to dismiss all appeals against the highly disputed elections of September 30 which brought the current leadership of the NFF to power.
December 4 – David Beckham has been urged by Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber to start making firm progress over establishing his Miami-based franchise.
By Paul Nicholson
December 4 – Success on the pitch can sometimes be a fickle financial master in football, but Burnley’s loss of £7.6 million for the year to June 2014 is looking like value-for-money. The Premier League new boys actually announced a £300,000 profit for their promotion season. But when you add in staff bonuses of £7.9 million due on elevation to England’s top flight, the profit becomes a £7.6 million loss.
December 4 – After months of turmoil and tension surrounding the venue for January’s Africa Cup of Nations, the tournament has finally got down to the real business of the draw, throwing up a juicy group of death.
December 4 – FC Bayern Munich is the world’s biggest club if you take into account membership numbers only. Portugal’s Benfica comes second, followed by FC Barcelona, Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund.
Manuel Neuer rightly belongs to the top three for the choice of world footballer of the year. But whether he has a chance against Messi and Ronaldo, is questionable.
But one thing is certain: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Manuel Neuer in the opinion of FIFA, are the three best footballers on the planet.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 3 – FIFA’s World Cup anti-corruption probe appears no nearer to being resolved after the organisation confirmed that ethics investigator Michael Garcia has gone ahead with his appeal against what he claims were “incomplete and erroneous” published findings of his 430-page report.
December 3 – The exact format of UEFA’s new Nations League competition tops the agenda at this week’s executive committee meeting at their Swiss headquarters.
By Mark Baber
December 3 – FIFA and UEFA have reportedly sent a joint letter to the Hellenic Football Federation (EPO) warning that proposed government legislation, which is aimed at tackling the serious problem of corruption and match-fixing in Greek football, constitutes an unacceptable involvement of the state in football and would lead to the country being banned from international competitions.
By Paul Nicholson
December 3 – Questionmarks over whether the 2018 World Cup hosting would make it to Kaliningrad have been dispelled by Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko who said that matches won’t be transferred to another city from Kaliningrad.
December 3 – With precision timing exactly four years after they won the vote to stage the 2022 World Cup, Qatar organisers have unveiled designs for their fourth planned venue, the 40,000-seat Qatar Foundation Stadium.