September 6 – Former Concacaf president and FIFA vice-president Jeffrey Webb, who was scooped up in the FBI raids on the Bar au Lac hotel in Zurich will not be sentenced until December 7, more than six years after his arrest in May 2015.
September 8 – If you think you might need moral support then call up a group of your sycophantic and often well-paid ‘legends’ to get you over the trickier hurdles of public and industry opinion.
July 28 – The last time these two teams met Qatar beat the USA 14-8. That was in the vote for the 2022 World Cup hosting in 2010 and it unleashed a storm the like of which the football world has never seen.
By Paul Nicholson
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. FIFA’s ethics folk don’t do much that isn’t in their own interest either.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s insistence that he will continue in post and brazen it out in face of the criminal investigation into his own behaviour – repeat, CRIMINAL investigation into his own behaviour – is no small thing. On multiple levels.
By Paul Nicholson
The fate of Trinidad and Tobago’s 2020 World Cup qualifying campaign currently looks to be lieing in the hands of a Port of Spain High Court judge rather than at the feet of a team on the pitch.
By Paul Nicholson
May 4 – FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino’s insistence on the Swiss judiciary pursuing a criminal case against former FIFA president Sepp Blatter could blow back on the governing body and potentially become a PR embarrassment for beIN Sports and PSG boss Nasser Al-Khelaifi.
By Paul Nicholson
January 6 – FIFA has a new human rights case to champion and this one looks like it is directly related to football. Following the Iraq vs Qatar game at the Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates, British passport holder Ali Issa Ahmed was arrested, reportedly for wearing a Qatar shirt to the game.
By Paul Nicholson
The alacrity of FIFA’s move to call on stakeholders to find a solution to the detention of part-time footballer Hakeem Al Araibi in Thailand shows a remarkable new found conscience and morality in an organisation that eschews a philosophy of never mixing politics and football.
By Paul Nicholson
The three biggest football presidencies in global football come up for election in 2019 with FIFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and UEFA all voting on new presidential terms. At present the only election of the three that will be contested will be in Asia – current president Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa announced his intention to run again last week.
August 15 – FIFA has moved swiftly to counter criticism of its Ethic processes following global outcry over the removal of the word ‘corruption’ from its updated Ethics Code, and the worrying (if not frightening) introduction of a new ‘defamation’ offence, being widely talked about as a new law for cover-up.
Saudi Arabia may be breaking through a long criticised barrier to allow women to watch sports in stadiums, but the real questions should perhaps be around what sports they will be able to watch.
US striker Megan Rapinoe’s claim that FIFA is “old, male and stale” may have been a comment triggered by disbelief over FIFA’s final nominations for its top female player award, but the wider context does bear closer examination. A look at the top of the FIFA hierarchy shows that half its confederation presidents do not have competing national women’s senior teams.
July 20 – The G20 demonstrations in Hamburg against Qatar last Saturday were paid for by an Egyptian businessman, according to German reports. The fake event that in turn spawned ‘fake’ news reports is one of an increasingly distorting series of stories and revelations that make the real situation in Qatar hard to understand, especially when trying to put into context any impact the blockade will have on the 2022 World Cup preparations and hosting.
On Tuesday afternoon, June 6, Captain Horace Burrell, 67, passed away at the John Hopkins Cancer Centre in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He had been battling cancer for more than a year and succumbed to it while undergoing additional treatment.