October 4 – Cristiano Ronaldo has issued a firm denial of the sexual assault allegations made against him by Kathryn Mayorga, an American woman, with whom Ronaldo went out in 2009 in Las Vegas.
October 3 – Former Romanian striker Adrian Mutu has been ordered to pay Chelsea £15.2 million after losing an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, a landmark sum as the highest compensation figure ever set by FIFA in such cases. It is also an important judgement for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), endorsing its position as sport’s independent judicial process.
October 3 – Police in Las Vegas have re-opened a rape investigation into Cristiano Ronaldo after his accuser claimed she was breaking a non-disclosure agreement.
By Paul Nicholson
October 1 – Saudi Arabia has been hit with a two-pronged billion dollar offensive from broadcaster beIN and the Qatar state over the on-going copyright theft of pirate broadcaster beoutQ. A consortium of rights holders including FIFA and the Premier League are expected to follow suit in the coming days as the Saudis rapidly turn themselves into the pariahs of the sports rights business.
By Andrew Warshaw and Paul Nicholson
September 25 – The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has issued a stunning indictment of the conduct of former FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke in issuing its full written reasons for dismissing his appeal against a 10-year ban from football and a CHF100,000 fine.
September 20 – Liverpool’s Croatian World Cup defender Dejan Lovren has been charged with perjury in the trial of ex-officials of Dinamo Zagreb, his former club.
By David Owen
September 11 – The International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS) has played down the significance of a ruling by the Brussels Court of Appeal that has been reported as calling into question the ability of football bodies, and potentially counterparts in other sports, to insist that disputes go to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
By David Owen
September 10 – The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)’s uncontested jurisdiction over sporting disputes appears to have been put in question by a ruling handed down by a Brussels Court of Appeal.
September 4 – A lifelong Swansea City fan who gave a Nazi salute to Tottenham Hotspur supporters has been branded a “racist oaf” by a judge and been banned from matches for three years.
August 31 – One of Belgium’s leading football TV presenters has been charged with being an accomplice to an armed robbery, according to prosecutors.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 30 – Six months after being found guilty, Juan Angel Napout (pictured), one of the biggest scalps in the sprawling FifaGate corruption scandal that brought the organisation to its knees, has been jailed for nine years in the latest get-tough sentence handed down by US justice authorities.
August 23 – In a landmark verdict six months after he was convicted for his role in the FifaGate scandal, Jose Maria Marin, the former president of Brazil’s football federation who to the last insisted he had done nothing wrong, has been sentenced to four years in jail.
August 23 – The international players’ union FIFPro has taken UEFA to task over a two-year ban imposed for matchfixing by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Maltese under-21 international Samir Arab.
August 23 – Coming just a day after the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would not be prosecuting Hillsborough police chief Norman Bettison for his part and lies in the cover-up of the disaster, Sussex police have been found to be in breach of the Freedom of Information (FoI) act.
August 22 – A former British police chief who was charged with lying over his role in the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster that killed 96 fans will no longer face trial after a review of evidence, according to prosecutors.