"If you want some accessible but informative insight into football then I suggest you couldn't do better than the Political Economy of Football website, which is not only intelligible but comes with the added bonus of being written by Addicks fan Wyn Grant." Ben Hayes - Charlton Athletic programme
The Economist used the recent death of Iranian goalkeeper Nasser Hejazi to reflect on the state of football in Iran. Hejazi was a critic of the regime and was even banned from Iranian television for a while. 20,000 people turned up to the first part of his funeral at a stadium, some of them chanting anti-government slogans. His body was spirited away for a secret burial.
Financially troubled Rushden & Diamonds have been expelled from the Conference. A full statement issued by the club can be found here.
This looks like the end of the dream realised by former owner Max Griggs that saw the Northamptonshire club win the League 2 championship, have one season in League 1 and play the likes of QPR, now in the Premier League.
Until recently potential buyers of football club looked at the Premier League in England or possibly at the Championship if they thought a promising bargain was available. Even Charlton went through a due diligence process with buyers from the Gulf.
The Football League is to introduce a scheme to cut spending on wages from the 2012-13 season. Called the Salary Costs Management Protocol, it is effectively a version of Uefa’s Financial Fair Play scheme which already applies to Premier League clubs.
In many respects Championship wages are revealed to be an even bigger challenge than those in the Premiership according to the latest Deloitte review of football finance. The ratio of wages to revenue there is 88 per cent compared with 68 per cent in the top flight.
The annual publication of the Deloitte review of football finance is always a major event for those interested in the business side of football. They have cornered the market for authoritative overviews of developments. We shall be featuring stories from this review over the next few days.
One point that immediately caught my eye was that for a second successive year the Premier League clubs’ total wages increase has outstripped revenue growth, rising by £64m (5 per cent) to over £1.4 billion in 2009/10.
The accounts of Coventry City Football Club (Holdings) Limited have been qualified by the auditors. They note that ‘the existence of a material uncertainity which may vast significant doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ This is a relatively unusual event for a football club.
Sepp Blatter and Fifa have a mission to develop football in the Global South. That’s fair enough: the international organisation of which I am vice-president has a similar mission in its field of activity.
However, in some countries football faces particular challenges from criminal organisations. One such country is Colombia where the Fifa under-20 World Cup kicks off on July 29th. It is the biggest sporting event ever held in the country and 250,000 tickets have been sold.
Konstanz, BRD: Now that the dust has settled after last week’s events in Zurich, and sitting just a few miles from the Swiss border, it is perhaps a good time to review the way ahead at Fifa from an English perspective.
Portsmouth FC have been acquired by a company controlled by Vladimir Antonov, a London-based Russian businessman. Convers Sports Initiatives owns a list of sports teams and franchises including the Spartak Moscow ice hockey team. It also has an interest in the Isle of Man TT motor cycle races.