Damning report about FIFA welcomed by Sepp Blatter

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Sepp Blatter is a man that has made enough bizarre statements to last anyone a lifetime but yesterday, his statement of approval that a Swiss court had a document about FIFA and the bribing situation, was merely incredible. It seems that the president of FIFA was simply happy that after years of pressure everyone was finally able to see just how much greed, corruption, and self-interest has plagued FIFA over the last few years.

The document was simply shocking as well as being damaging to the organisation as it clearly showed that FIFA has not been helping football out at all. Throughout the document were plenty of allegations that were substantial about how FIFA senior members Ricardo Teixeira and Joao Havelange have walked away with more than £14m in bribes over the past eight years from a marketing company that wanted the rights to broadcast the matches.

Vote looming to determine Rangers future in the SFL

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Scottish Football League clubs will soon vote on whether or not the ‘Newco Rangers’ deserve an official place in the Scottish Football League for next season. Charles Green will be waiting anxiously to hear the results of the vote that will take place Friday among reps from 28 of the member clubs. The vote will focus on whether Sevco Scotland Limited should be allowed to join the league and also whether the Ibrox side should be admitted into the First Division.

Several teams that play in the Scottish Football League have already publicly announced that they are against plans to allow Newco to play in the second tier league because they do not believe it is fair. Before the team can get into the SFL setup up a majority of clubs have to vote to allow the team to join. The Friday vote will determine if that majority is met or not.

The placement of Rangers next season could have serious repercussions for the SFL

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Following in the aftermath of Charlie Green’s application for top flight entry being rejected by the clubs in the Scottish Premier League, Regan, the chief executive of the SFL, has made a claim that social unrest would be the result of Rangers fans being deprived of their team.

Regan has said that the only viable solution now for Rangers was to come into the SFL in the first division, as if they played anywhere else it would result in the game as a whole losing around £15.7m in revenue.

He also made it clear that the Scottish Football League couldn’t allow Rangers to start right at the bottom, which effectively means that the SPL clubs are facing the prospect of a breakaway and an SPL2 if the plan for Rangers to join the first division is also rejected.

He added that for big clubs that were at the top of the league, that amount equated to half of their annual distribution, and for clubs at the bottom is would basically wipe out their entire distrbution, and for the even smaller clubs it was a large proportion of their annual turnovers.

Regan went onto say that even if the Ibrox club did go into the first division, there would still be a loss of income to other SPL clubs of £5m, and as the game isn’t self sustaining it would mean a slow and lingering death for football in Scotland. This would then trickle down through the SFL and he considered that from their perspective, being the governing body, they simply can’t allow this to happen.

Regan has also confirmed that a real threat as arisen pertaining to TV contracts and said that they had had conversations with broadcasters and understood what the stakeholders from Sky, Sport 5, ESPN and various other commercial partners of the SPL were likely to do if Ranger were not a part of the top two tiers of the SFL, and it wasn’t pretty.

 

Goal line technology expected to be given the go ahead on Thursday

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When the IFAB, International Football Association Board, meet on Thursday they are expected to vote for the go-ahead of goal line technology. The results of the recent testing are expected to be heard by the board before they vote in both the GoalRef and Hawk-Eye systems.

While this kind of technology has been called for for a long time by many in the game, a few are still unsure about Hawk-Eye will actually work. Basically, there will be 6 cameras per goal which will be tracking the ball as it moves around the pitch.

The software within the system will be using a ‘triangulation’ to pinpoint the ball’s precise location. When the ball crosses the goal line an encrypted radio is directly sent to a wristwatch the referee will wear to alert him that a goal has been scored. In keeping with the requirements that FIFA have made, the entire process will be completed in less than a second.

Once approval has been made, both the FA and the Premier League can introduce this technology into competitions. The chairman of the FA David Bernstein, as well as Alex Horne the general secretary, has travelled to Zurich in order to take part in the voting.. The FA in England, along with their counterparts in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have one vote each, while the governing body of world football, FIFA, has four. Hawk-eye needs 6 of the 8 votes to go through.

So to GoalRef, this works via a microchip that has been implanted in the football and uses low, magnetic waves in the area surrounding the goal. This system detects if any changes have been made in the magnetic fields along or behind the goal line to determine whether or not a goal has indeed been scored. This process also takes less than a second for the message to be relayed to the ref.

 

Pearce’s decision to leave Beckham out of the Olympic squad shocks everyone

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Harry Redknapp, the recently sacked manager of Spurs, has said that Stuart Pearce’s decision to leave David Beckham out of his GB Olympic squad had effectively made him kiss goodbye to the possibility of ever getting a knighthood. He also praised Pearce, however, for being brave enough to go against the majority of football fans and chose the squad that he wanted.

Redknapp, speaking to The Sun, said that undoubtedly Pearce will have upset some in high places who would have loved to see Beckham in the squad, and he himself was sad and surprised he hadn’t been picked. Redknapp added that Pearce could kiss a knighthood goodbye, but credit had to be given for his bravery as he was the manager and should be free to choose who he wants.

Beckham had spoken of his hopes that he would be included in the squad as one of the 3 over-age players each team is allowed, and he was widely expected to be picked by those inside and outside of football. He made it as far as the extended list of possibles, but revealed yesterday that he had not made the final cut, and the 3 places are understood to have gone to Craig Bellamy, Micah Richards and Ryan Giggs.

Danny Mills, the former England defender who was a teammate of Beckham’s in the World Cup of 2002, has hit out at the decision of Pearce and claims that the former boss of Manchester City has, in the past, struggled with big players and while everyone around the world knows ‘Brand Beckham’ he is still one of the finest footballers and can still cut it.

Beckham was a key player in drumming up support for the bid London put in to stage the games back in 2005, and it looks likely that the chairman of London 2012, Sebastian Coe, will now offer him a role in the Olympics.