As the search goes on to find a leadership candidate for world football who isn’t completely compromised before they start, our good friends at Transparency International have produced a report that begs the question: is there a single football association fit to lead international reform? TI have assessed each of the world’s national football associations and regional bodies against the…
With the publication yesterday of FIFA’s list of official candidates to take over from scandal ridden Sepp Blatter we at the Offshore Game have been checking out the candidates. Five candidates are currently on the list, with Platini’s candidacy suspended pending an investigation. Each of the approved candidates was vetted by an Ad-Hoc Ethics Committee before…
Today, the Court of Session in Scotland ruled in favour of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the Big Tax Case. The Big Tax Case was a challenge to Rangers’ use of an offshore tax avoidance scheme to pay its players. This is the first victory for HMRC in what has become a very long…
A story in last week’s Financial Times piqued our interest. Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, has told AirAsia that they have four weeks to raise more equity or their licence to operate in the country may be at risk. Why is this important to a West London football club? because QPR owe vast amounts of money to…
Today we were alerted to an interim application being made by Sports Direct at the High Court in London against Rangers Football Club. As we happened to be at court anyway, we went down to check out what was going on. Today’s court action was about confidentiality. Specifically, Sports Direct want to prevent any details…
The triumphalism of today’s newspapers in Blatter’s resignation will be short lived. The problems at FIFA are far wider than Blatter. In all corrupt regimes, the leader tries to hang on as long as possible. They know the details of the secret bank accounts, who has been handling the bribes and the bribed. The mesh…
As night follows day we see yet more bluster from UK politicians and football officials as FIFA predictably descends into yet another scandal. This time it’s serious, with Prince William wading in to express his outrage. But what are the British actually doing about this? The FBI have mounted a serious investigation which has resulted…
Media covering the FIFA crisis throws up the same simple, wrong answers time and again. What’s needed is harder, but reflects the real beauty of the game. Here are three things that won’t solve the crisis on their own. FIFA’s sponsors. Do we actually need to write this? Yes, it’s vaguely engrossing to see which of…