Governing Bodies
REVENGE TIME AS UEFA APPLY THE BIG STICK ON SUPER LEAGUE REBELS…SET TO CHANGE EURO HOST CITIES
Uefa meets on Friday (April 23) with revenge on some members’ minds following the attempted Super League breakaway, while the fate of some Euro host cities is also on the agenda.
In the space of 48 emotional hours, between Sunday evening and Tuesday evening, European football’s governing body, aided by fans and politicians, quelled a mutiny by 12 English, Spanish and Italian clubs who presumed to form their own quasi-closed which would have threatened Uefa’s own Champions League and the federation’s governance of the game.
Nine clubs, including all six in England, subsequently withdrew and even if Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid, whose president Florentino Perez led the attempted secession, are still refusing formally to capitulate, their proposal no longer looks credible.
Their setback showed money does not inevitably win in football and some want to make sure that the defeated big clubs fall as hard as possible.
Danish executive committee member Jesper Moeller on Monday suggested throwing Manchester City, Chelsea and Real Madrid out of this year’s Champions League semi-finals.
That drastic measure seems unlikely to be approved.
“There is relatively little chance that next week’s matches will not be played,” Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin told Slovenian television Pop TV.
“The key thing is that the season has already started. If we cancelled the matches, television stations would have compensation demands.”
But while Ceferin said he wanted to “rebuild the unity” he did not rule out some form of payback.
“I can’t go into details, we are discussing it with our legal department,” he said.
Power redistribution
Meanwhile, another Uefa member, Javier Tebas, the president of the Spanish Liga, urged restraint.
“Everyone wants to cut everyone’s head off,” he said on Thursday.
“We have procedures. We don’t need to rush into things.”
“The most important thing is these clubs have been sanctioned by their own fans. The sanction is the blow to their reputations.”
The fiasco has already redistributed power within Uefa.
Andrea Agnelli, Juventus boss and one of the promoters of a Super League, has relinquished both the presidency of the European Club Association (ECA) and his seat on the Uefa executive committee.
Bayern boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge was rewarded for his loyalty when he filled the vacant Uefa position.
Another executive committee member whose club refused to join the rebels, Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, took over the powerful ECA reins on Thursday.
The two men are now the leading club representatives in decisions on the commercial management of the Champions League, which was radically reshaped on Monday.
Uefa’s executive committee approved a new format for the Champions League which had been proposed before news of the uprising broke.
It will be introduced from 2024, with the number of clubs in the group stage increasing from 32 to 36.
Euro host questions
In the immediate future, Uefa has to finalise the organisation of the Euros, postponed from last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and due to start on June 11 in 12 cities, each in a different country.
So far nine cities have agreed to Uefa’s demand that fans be allowed at every match.
The three holdouts, Bilbao, Dublin and Munich, have been threatened with losing their matches.
The issue was on the agenda on Monday, but Uefa postponed a decision until Friday.
On Wednesday evening, however, the Basque organisers said that they had received a letter from Uefa saying Bilbao was being replaced.
The Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) said earlier in the month that Covid-19 restrictions imposed by the Basque region made it “impossible” to admit fans to the San Mames stadium.
Basque officials said they are considering legal action to recover the 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million) they had spent.
The RFEF wants to keep Bilbao’s four matches in Spain and has proposed Seville as an alternative, if the Andalusian regional authorities are more accommodating on spectators.
The Irish government, concerned by the high numbers of Covid cases in the country, is not at all optimistic about hosting fans at matches in Dublin.
“We just think June is too soon,” Irish Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told Today FM radio on Wednesday.
Budapest, St Petersburg, Baku, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Glasgow, Copenhagen, Rome and London have all promised crowds at between 25 per cent and 100 per cent of capacity.
Munich has also not yet been able to guarantee that fans would be able to attend matches.
-AFP
Governing Bodies
Nigeria becoming an epicentre of global badminton as Francis Orbih enters the Badminton World Federation Council
Laurels on the courts and now glory in the boardroom sums up the mark that badminton is making in Nigeria.
The President, Badminton Federation of Nigeria (BFN), Francis Orbih, has been elected as a council member of the Badminton World Federation (BWF).
The election took place during the BWF Annual General Meeting on Saturday in Xiamen, China.
Orbih emerged victorious over top contenders from other African countries.
He will join Cameroon’s Odette Assembe Engoulou on the council, while Chipo Zumburani (Zimbabwe) and Hadia ElSaid (Egypt) missed out.
An elated Orbih expressed his gratitude to fellow badminton presidents across the globe for their trust and support.
He said, “I am deeply honoured by the trust placed in me by my peers across the badminton world.
“I look forward to quality representation, driving development initiatives, and strengthening badminton’s global reach over the next four years.”
Orbih also acknowledged the support of the Federal Government of Nigeria, particularly the National Sports Commission (NSC), which he said played a significant role in his successful bid.
“The Chairman and the Director General of the NSC monitored the entire process. I’m grateful for their involvement and confident Nigeria will benefit from this,” he stated.
He further appreciated the BFN board members and the Nigerian badminton community for their prayers and continued belief in his leadership.
“From the day I declared my intentions, the board members of BFN have been supportive, and I promise not to disappoint them,” Orbih concluded.
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A former member of the FIFA Council, Mamoutou Toure, has been released from jail in Mali after almost two years in detention for alleged corruption, Malian media reports said on Wednesday.
Toure, president of the Malian Football Federation since 2019, was released after 622 days in prison on Tuesday.
He served on the FIFA Council, world football’s all-powerful decision-making body, for four years until last month when he lost his seat after failing to contest new elections.
The 67-year-old was arrested in August 2023 on allegations of embezzling $28 million of public funds but was granted a provisional release order by the Malian courts, reports said.
He was accused of misconduct during his time as the National Assembly’s financial and administrative director from 2013-2019.
Toure denied all charges and, during his time in jail, was last August re-elected as Malian Football Federation president for a second consecutive term, with his supporters claiming he was a victim of a conspiracy fuelled by detractors.
While in jail, he received a letter of support from FIFA president Gianni Infantino. However, as of last month, Toure is no longer a member of the FIFA Council or the Confederation of African Football’s executive committee.
-Reuters
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The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has denied reports of an outstanding debt to former captain Christian Chukwu and has challenged anyone with verifiable documents to prove otherwise.
Chukwu, a former national team captain and chief coach, died last Saturday.
The Nigeria Football Federation decried statements in a section of social media that the football-ruling body was indebted to the deceased.
Reacting to one statement on social media that claimed NFF owed the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations-winning team captain the sum of $128,000, NFF General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, said: “There is no record in the NFF of any outstanding indebtedness to ‘Chairman’ Christian Chukwu.
“During the first term of the Board headed by Amaju Pinnick, a committee was set up to diligently peruse the papers of coaches who were being owed, even from previous NFF administrations.
“That committee was given the clear mandate to verify all debts and ensure that the coaches being owed were paid immediately. I am aware that the ‘Chairman’ was in the employ of the NFF between 2002 and 2005, before he was relieved of the post following the 1-1 draw with Angola in a FIFA World Cup qualifying match in Kano in August 2005. There is certainly no record of indebtedness to him in the NFF.”
Sanusi challenged anyone with genuine and verifiable documents of NFF indebtedness to any coach, who has worked with any of the National Teams over the past two decades, to come forward and tender those documents.
“As a credible organization that is very much alive to its responsibilities, if we are confronted with any genuine document of indebtedness to any coach, we will offset the debt immediately.”
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