48 selections in FIFA World Cup

The Council of the International Football Federation (FIFA) has approved the proposal to increase the number of teams participating in the World Cups from 32 to 48.

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England plays political football over FIFA poppy ban

By FINIAN CUNNINGHAM*

The Rule Britannia brigade were out in force this week furiously denouncing an international football ban on what they say is their right to commemorate Britain’s war dead.

Soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, ruled that when England plays Scotland next week on November 11 neither team is permitted to wear the red poppy symbol on their shirts.

FIFA must ban Israeli settlement teams, if it wants a level playing field

There is a rising tide of pressure, including UN intervention, calling for exclusion. Any other decision would go against football’s core principle of impartiality | BEN JAMAL in the Guardian

‘Six Israeli clubs are playing in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. | Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

(October 13) – As a follower of football, I am passionate and partisan when supporting my team. But, like all fans, I am infuriated when I sense that a referee is not applying the rules impartially. At the heart of the beautiful game is that simple principle of fairness: that we are all playing on a level playing field.

Holding true to that fundamental has enabled sport to play a leading role in addressing wider societal inequalities – as, for example, when the sporting boycott of South Africa played such a key role in addressing apartheid. There’s no reason it shouldn’t do likewise in Palestine.

UN letter to FIFA over Israeli soccer clubs

FIFA’s ubiquitous banner. Article 3 of the FIFA Statutes states: “Discrimination of any kind against a Country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin colour, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion, wealth, birth or any other status, sexual orientation or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”

By Peter Beaumont

Jerusalem (October 11) – A senior United Nations official has written to Fifa to reiterate that the UN regards Israeli settlements – and by extension Israeli football teams that play in them – to be “without validity” and “illegal under international law”.

Rio Olympics: State-organized talent theft and mercantilism

Qatar’s Marko Bagaric from Bulgaria, left, tries to score past France’s Ludovic Fabregas during the men’s preliminary handball match between France and Qatar at the 2016 Summer Olympics on Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro | Ben Curtis/AP

By TONY SEED 

August 10, updated August 19, 2016

Of the some 11,000 athletes competing in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, an unknown number are competing for medal-hungry countries that are not their birth nation. At least 23 of Qatar’s 39 member team at Rio were born outside of Qatar and transplanted – recruited in many cases with the offer of financial inducements. The Canadian Olympic team also features a number of plastic or transfer athletes recruited through the “Own The Podium” program of private big capital for support and funding on the basis that they are “winners” and “America’s best who happen to have some kind of Canadian connection.” Such developments, all in the name of high ideals, should be of concern to Canadians.

How to fix a soccer game

jiuguangw | Flickr

In this excerpt from The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime, Declan Hill investigates the intricacies of match-fixing in soccer: how fixes are arranged, how they’re signalled, and how everyone gets paid.

FIFA stops funding to Trinidad and Tobago

TTFA president Raymond Tim Kee | Web

(August 20) – Football’s world governing body, FIFA, has confirmed that it has halted funding to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) over its failure to produce audited statements.