Category Archives: Football

South Korea football league imposes record fine on FC Seoul over sex dolls outrage

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K-League says club ‘deeply humiliated’ female football fans and damaged the league’s reputation

South Korea’s professional football league has imposed a record fine on one of its clubs for placing sex dolls in empty seats during a recent match played without spectators due to the coronavirus pandemic.

FC Seoul was forced to apologise this week after TV and online viewers spotted about two dozen sex dolls dotted around the stadium during the club’s 1-0 win over Gwangju FC on Sunday.

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Ibrahimovic statue set to move from Malmö’s stadium after vandalism

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  • Local council is looking for a new site in Swedish city
  • Statue targeted after Ibrahimovic bought stake in Hammarby

Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s statue is likely to be relocated from outside Malmö’s stadium to another site in the city after repeated acts of vandalism.

The statue was unveiled outside the Swedbank Stadium last October but has come under attack since Ibrahimovic, who began his career with Malmö FF, became a part-owner of Hammarby, a rival top-flight club based in Stockholm.

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Dele Alli injured during ‘horrible’ knifepoint robbery at his home

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  • Tottenham midfielder hit in face by jewellery raiders
  • ‘Thank you for all the messages … we’re all okay now’

Dele Alli has been injured during a robbery at his home in north London. The Tottenham midfielder was held at knifepoint and punched after burglars broke in during the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Related: Jan Vertonghen's family robbed at knifepoint while Spurs were in Leipzig

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Jair Bolsonaro wants football to start up again despite Covid-19 deaths in Brazil

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  • President calls for resumption of football despite crisis
  • Brazil has more than 5,900 deaths due to the coronavirus

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro wants to see football competitions restart soon despite the country’s high number of coronavirus cases, arguing that players are less likely to die from Covid-19 because of their physical fitness.

Bolsonaro is one of the few world leaders that still downplays the risks brought by the coronavirus, which he has likened to “a little flu”.

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Haiti FA president accused of sexually abusing young female players

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  • Claims of abuse by Yves Jean-Bart at national centre
  • Jean-Bart denies all allegations made against him

The president of the Haitian football federation has been accused of sexually abusing young female footballers at the country’s national training centre.

Yves Jean-Bart, known as “Dadou”, the president of the Fédération Haïtienne De Football (FHF) since 2000, denies accusations that he coerced several players at the Centre Technique National in Croix-des-Bouquets into having sex. The alleged incidents are understood to have taken place within the last five years.

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World Cup likely to stay in Qatar despite new bribery accusations in US

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  • US prosecutors say three Fifa officials took bribes during voting
  • Qatar supreme committee denies any allegations of wrongdoing

The 2022 World Cup is highly unlikely to be moved from Qatar despite the latest criminal indictment by the US Department of Justice accusing three senior Fifa officials of receiving bribes for voting in favour of the Gulf state hosting the tournament.

The indictment, the latest in the long-running US prosecution of football officials for alleged corruption, accuses Nicolás Leoz, the Paraguayan then president of Conmebol, South American football’s governing body, and the former Brazil federation president Ricardo Teixeira of being paid bribes to vote for Qatar at the decisive Fifa executive committee (exco) meeting in December 2010. A third then very senior member of the exco under the former president Sepp Blatter, who is not named but is identifiable as Julio Grondona, the then president of Argentina’s FA, is also accused of being paid to vote for Qatar, but Grondona, who died in 2014, was never criminally charged.

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Former Fox executives indicted in Fifa bribery scheme

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Multimillion dollar scheme involved kickbacks to Fifa officials for broadcast rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cup

Two former senior executives at Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox corporation have been indicted over their alleged role in a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving kickbacks to Fifa officials in exchange for broadcast and marketing rights to some of the world’s biggest football tournaments.

The US Department of Justice announced on Monday that Hernan Lopez, the former chief executive of Fox International Channels and Carlos Martinez, the former president of Fox Latin America, have been charged with wire fraud and money laundering offenses, marking another series of indictments in the US government’s sprawling investigation of corruption in world football.

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Emiliano Sala: CAA says crash investigation could take rest of 2020

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Striker’s family criticise Civil Aviation Authority for length of investigation into death

The family of the footballer Emiliano Sala, who died in a plane crash 14 months ago, has strongly criticised the length of time it is taking the UK aviation regulator to investigate the tragedy.

Relatives of the Argentinian striker are also angry at what they see as a lack of teeth from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in prosecuting the sort of unlicensed flight that Sala was taking at the time of his death.

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Emiliano Sala: pilot was not licensed to fly plane that crashed

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David Ibbotson had not completed night-flying training and was not allowed to be paid for carrying passengers, report finds

The pilot of the plane carrying the professional footballer Emiliano Sala was not licensed to fly the aircraft that plunged into the sea, killing both of them, an official report has concluded.

David Ibbotson had not completed night-flying training or recently practised instrument flying, a vital skill when piloting a plane on a dark night in poor weather, and the aircraft was travelling far faster than it should have been just before the accident.

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Harry Redknapp and Caitlyn Jenner caught in charity support sting

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The celebrities took large fees in return for backing a fake environmental group set up by C4’s Dispatches programme

Caitlyn Jenner and Harry Redknapp have both accepted thousands of pounds in return for backing a fake charity set up by Channel 4 in a sting operation.

In a Dispatches documentary, Celebs For Sale: The Great Charity Scandal, to be broadcast on Monday evening, the two well-known faces are revealed to be part of a widespread practice of paying celebrities for public support.

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Ronaldinho arrested in Paraguay over fake passport row

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Football star detained in police station in Asunción shortly before planned flight back to home town of Rio

Football star Ronaldinho has been arrested in a hotel in Paraguay’s capital after authorities said he entered the country with falsified documents.

The 39-year-old Brazilian and his brother, Roberto Assis, were taken to a police station in Asunción shortly before 10pm local time on Friday, Paraguay’s prosecutors office said in a statement.

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Manchester City banned from Champions League for two seasons

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  • Ban starts next season and City also fined €30m (£25m)
  • Club say they will appeal to CAS at ‘earliest opportunity’

Manchester City have been banned from the Champions League for the next two seasons by Uefa and fined €30m (£25m) after they were found to have seriously misled European football’s governing body and broken financial fair play rules.

The severity of the ban from both of Uefa’s elite club competitions and the scale of the fine reflect how seriously Uefa’s FFP compliance bodies consider the club to have breached the rules and code of conduct.

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Italian referee banned from football for one year after headbutting goalkeeper

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  • Antonio Martiniello and Matteo Ciccioli clashed after match
  • Referee had earlier sent Ciccioli off in regional league game

An Italian football referee has been banned from officiating or attending football matches for one year, after headbutting a goalkeeper following a regional league match.

Italy’s Ansa news agency reported that on 1 February, Antonio Martiniello sent off Borgo Mogliano keeper Matteo Ciccioli during their home game against Montottone, in the eastern Macerata district. The hosts held on to win 3-1.

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Man behind football exposé revealed as source of Dos Santos leak

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Football Leaks founder passed on financial records of Africa’s richest woman, says lawyer

A Portuguese man behind one of the biggest exposés in the history of football has been identified as the source of a leaked cache of financial records about the business empire of Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos.

Lawyers for Rui Pinto, who is awaiting trial in Portugal on charges including alleged hacking and attempted extortion, said in 2018 he passed a non-profit whistleblowing organisation a hard drive containing data relating to Dos Santos’s business empire, which is estimated at $2.2bn.

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Qatar eases exit rules but concerns linger over abuse of domestic workers

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Exit permits to be scrapped, but requirement for domestic workers to give employers 72 hours’ notice is ‘problematic’, say activists

Domestic workers in Qatar must give their employers advance notice before leaving the country, in a new policy that campaigners say raises concerns for those trapped in abusive situations.

As pressure mounts on Qatar to tackle labour exploitation ahead of the 2022 World Cup, it announced last week that it was abolishing restrictions on leaving the country for nearly all migrant workers, who previously had to obtain their employer’s permission.

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Former Osasuna official says club fixed La Liga matches in 2013 and 2014

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• Ángel Vizcay says Getafe and Real Betis were paid to lose games
• Former president Miguel Archanco denies any match-fixing

The Spanish first division club Osasuna fixed football matches in an attempt to avoid relegation over two seasons, a court heard on Tuesday.

A former club secretary said that the club had paid Getafe and Real Betis to lose against them in 2012-13 and 2013-14 respectively and had made a further payment to Espanyol in return for a draw as he gave testimony in the case led by the investigating judge Fermín Otamendi and brought against 11 men: six former Osasuna directors, three former Betis players and two estate agents also accused of being involved.

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Field of broken dreams: football’s slave trade – photo essay

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All they want is to do is play professionally, but for many young hopefuls from Africa their expensive journey to Turkey ends in exploitation

• Photographs by Italo Rondinella

For months, Yves Kibendo woke up every morning at 6am. He would leave his house in an ancient area of Istanbul, returning late in the evening, after working for 12 hours in a textile factory.

He was paid under the table, or sometimes not at all.

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Forest Green Rovers granted planning permission for all-wooden stadium

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  • Club say it will be ‘greenest football stadium in the world’
  • League Two side are world’s first 100% vegan club

The world’s first football stadium made almost entirely out of wood, which will be home to League Two side Forest Green Rovers, has been granted planning permission.

Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the 5,000-capacity ‘Eco Park’ is set to be “the greenest football stadium in the world,” according to the club’s website.

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Jaw-dropping sport moments of 2019: USA snub Trump … and enjoy it

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Megan Rapinoe walked it as she talked it, inspiring the USA to World Cup glory while posing important political questions

The cheeky fire-starters at Eight by Eight magazine knew exactly what they were doing when they waited six whole months until the business end of the Women’s World Cup to publish the interview with Megan Rapinoe they had recorded in January. At least as much as the impish American midfielder knew what she was provoking when asked whether the US women’s national soccer team she captains intended to visit Donald Trump if they managed the exceedingly rare feat of repeating as world champions.

“I’m not going to the fucking White House,” Rapinoe flatly stated. “No fucking way will we be invited to the White House.”

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Chelsea supporter arrested for allegedly racially abusing Son Heung-min

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• Incident was reported to police by fellow Chelsea fan
• Spurs investigating abuse of Antonio Rüdiger

English football’s racism crisis took a new twist after it emerged that a Chelsea supporter was arrested for allegedly racially abusing Tottenham Hotspur’s Son Heung-min on Sunday– during the Premier League match that had to be paused because a monkey chant was aimed at Chelsea’s Antonio Rüdiger by members of the home crowd.

Anthony Taylor, the referee, stopped play after Rüdiger claimed he had heard racist taunts during the second half of Chelsea’s victory over their London rivals. An announcement on the public address system informed the crowd at the Tottenham stadium that “racist behaviour from spectators is interfering with the game”. The announcement was made on two further occasions, in line with Premier League protocols.

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