Tag: FIFA

  • FIFA declares Eagles free of doping

    •Seven others, too

    NIGERIA’S SUPER Eagles squad members and other seven teams participating at the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil have no doping issues to be worried about, SportingLife can authoritatively report.

    World’s soccer governing body Chief Medical Officer Prof. Jiri Dvorak is a release on Saturday disclosed that all analyses of the doping tests conducted with all the players in the squad list of the teams have yielded negative results.

    “No prohibited substances were detected in any of the urine and blood samples taken. The analyses of the tests were conducted by the WADA accredited LAD laboratory of Lausanne (Switzerland).

    “The use of biological profiling through consequent examinations of urine and blood of all players participating in FIFA competitions is part of the new strategy of football’s world governing body in the fight against doping,” the report read in part.

  • 54,000 security officers for FIFA Confederations Cup

    54,000 security officers for FIFA Confederations Cup

    Rio de Janeiro  - The FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013 will rely on
    a security plan comprised of Brazilian federal, state and municipal forces, with
    more than 54,000 security officers involved in implementing the security plan
    designed for the competition that kicks off  Saturday, 15 June. 
    
    Details of theConfederations Cup security plan were announced during a press conference held on
    Friday, 14 June at the Open Media Centre in Rio de Janeiro.
    
    According to General Jamil Megid, head of the Brazilian Ministry of Defense's
    Special Advisory Staff for Security of Major Events, the objective of the security
    strategy is to act preventively. The national defense contingent relies on 20,000
    security officers in the host cities; over 1,100 of this group are military
    personnel with specializations such as combating terrorism or chemical and nuclear
    agents.
    
    "The main objective in the areas of public security and defense is to provide a safe
    and peaceful atmosphere. The principal focus is on coordination and integration.
    Obviously there are several institutions on the federal, state and municipal level,
    all of whom have their own doctrine and manner of procedure. What we are attempting
    is to optimize these efforts and build a synergy, with all these institutions
    cooperating with one another," said General Megid.
    
    In addition to plans for the the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013, planning
    national defense and public security for the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 also calls
    for integrating strategies among the armed forces, installing command and control
    Centres, and buying equipment and technology, all of which totals R$ 1.9 billion
    (approximately US$ 890 million) in investment from the federal government. Eight
    Integrated Command Centres have already been installed, in addition to two national
    Centres (in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro), and one in each host city for the
    Confederations Cup.
    
    On Thursday 13 June, President Dilma Rousseff inaugurated 12 Integrated Mobile
    Command Centers, two for each city hosting games of the Confederations Cup. The
    equipment used to help integrate the work of the federal, state and municipal
    security forces includes monitoring and communications systems to provide security
    for the duration of the competition. The security plan also includes helicopters
    with high-technology vigilance equipment, anti-bomb equipment, and other security
    apparatuses.
    
    The Brazilian Ministry of Justice's Extraordinary Secretariat for Security of Major
    Events has confirmed the contingent will include 3,500 federal police officers;
    2,800 federal highway patrol officers, 600 members of the National Public Security
    Force; 150 members of the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN); 31,000 military
    police officers; 5,100 firefighters; 3,400 police officers; 6,200 municipal guards;
    and 2,200 traffic police officers.
    
    José Monteiro, director of operations at the Extraordinary Secretariat for Security
    of Major Events, explains that the investments are enabling a coordinated strategy
    between security forces from all three levels of government. "The equipment
    purchased is only the visible part of what has been done over the last few years.
    The part that cannot be seen, which is just as important as the material legacy, is
    what we call the operational and doctrinal legacy: bringing the forces together,
    working and planning in concert."
    
    In addition to Monteiro and General Megid, the press conference was attended by
    Colonel Wanius Amorim, Extraordinary Superintendent for Major Events at the Rio de
    Janeiro State Civil Defense, and Lieutenant-Colonel Marcelo Rocha, head of the
    Operational Planning sector of the Rio de Janeiro Military Police.
  • Reuben Gabriel Transfer saga : Babayaro gives Pillars deadline

    Reuben Gabriel Transfer saga : Babayaro gives Pillars deadline

    •Vows to drag club to FIFA

    Proprietor and owner of Kaduna Based Pioneers Football academy, Emmanuel Babayaro has given Kano Pillars up to the end of this month to pay up the agreed 10 percent further sale pact contained in midfielder Ruben Gabriel’s deal when he sold the player’s right to the Kano based team shortly before his movement to Kilmarnock in Scotland.

    Babayaro told allnigeriasoccer.com: “I have been patient and have shown maximum understanding with the management of Kano Pillars owing to the fact that Ruben Gabriel is from Kaduna state like myself but it seems as if Kano Pillars are cashing in on that.

    “They promised to pay when they get their allocation from the state Government.

    “I understand they have collected the allocation because they have paid their players debts owed them but my money is still not been talked about.”

    Adding to his previous statement, Emmanuel Babayaro said:

    “The end of this month is the deadline and no going back on that.

    “If my money is not paid, my lawyers will swing into action and I won’t hesistate to sue all parties invovled to FIFA,” he warned.

    Five years ago, it would be recalled that Emmanuel Babayaro paid the sum of =N=100,000 (500 euros) for Reuben Gabriel after watching him play in State FA cup for M and G.

    He later loaned him to Kaduna United for two seasons before another loan spell at Enyimba that didn’t work out well and the player spent another year with Kano Pillars on loan before being sold to Pillars by Emmanuel Babayaro with a 10 percent sell on clause which Kano pillars reneged on when the player moved to Kilmarnock claiming he moved as a free player.

    There is conclusive evidence that the player was sold to an agent Tony Harris for 100,000 euros before his move to Scotland.

  • FIFA Cup: No extra incentive for Super Eagles  – Amadu

    FIFA Cup: No extra incentive for Super Eagles – Amadu

    NFF scribe Musa Amadu has said that no further incentive would be given to the Super Eagles players at the forth coming FIFA Confederation Cup holding in Brazil in June.
    Amadu said that the players and their officials would receive only their normal winning bonus of $5,000. “It is a service to our fatherland, no extra incentive would be given to them. They are at the tournament to make a mark, and that is what all Nigerians expect from them. If God’s willing they win the tournament, Nigerians would surely reward them adequately. It is a call to duty” he said told Nationsports.
    The FIFA Confederation Cup will begin on 15th June, with the Super Eagles playing their first match against Tahiti on 17th June. The African Champions will take on their South American counterpart Uruguay on 20th June, while their last match would be against World and European Champions Spain on 23rd June.
    Two teams are expected to qualify from each group for the semi finals. When Nigeria last participated in tournament in 1995, they finished fourth, losing the third place match to Mexico on penalties.
  • Sao Paulo World Cup venue to miss FIFA deadline

    Sao Paulo World Cup venue to miss FIFA deadline

    The building firm responsible for Sao Paulo’s new World Cup stadium has admitted that the venue would not be ready until March, next year.

    This is more than two months after the deadline set by the world football’s governing body FIFA.

    Frederico Barbosa, chief engineer for construction company Odebrecht, said a contractual obligation to fit the stadium with 48,000 permanent seats would be met by December 31.

    But the installation of temporary stands that increase the venue’s capacity to 68,000 is expected to take at least another two months.

    “We have to finish construction of the roof and this prevents us from starting work on the temporary stands,” Barbosa said.

    “We can try to bring this forward but it still won’t be finished until after (the deadline). It will take another two or three months.”

    Known in Brazil as the “Itaquerao”, the stadium’s redevelopment is the least advanced of any of the 12 World Cup venues.

    Odebrecht is still awaiting a promised $200 million (about N314 million) loan from state-run banks and has threatened to stop work if an imminent deal is not struck.

    It is not just Sao Paulo’s World Cup stadium that has caused concern for FIFA.

    Each of Brazil’s six venues for June’s Confederations Cup – considered an organisational warm-up for the World Cup – long overshot their original deadlines of December 2012.

    Brasilia’s Estadio Nacional was yet to be reopened despite being scheduled to host the Confederations Cup opener between Brazil and Japan on June 15.

    Last week FIFA Secretary General, Jerome Valcke reiterated delays would no longer be tolerated.

    “I repeat again: the completion of work at the remaining World Cup stadiums has a strict deadline, which is December 2013,” he said.

  • 2014 WORLD CUP QUALIFIERS: FIFA list Ivorian ref for Eagles, Harambee Stars rematch lUEFA’s Wilhelmus takes charge of security

    The World’s soccer governing body (FIFA) has listed Ivorian Dezire Dove as centre referee in Kenya’s Harambee Stars vs Nigeria’s Super Eagles match and will be assisted by countrymen Yeo Songuifolo and Burundian Jean Claude Birimushaha.

    SportingLife further gathered that FIFA has also sent out Dembele Dennis from Ivory Coast to be the fourth official while Idrissa Sarr from Mauritania will be the referees assessor. The Match Commisioner is Mazen Marzouk from Egypt.

    The Kenya and Nigeria match is slated for June 5 in Nairobi.

    Meanwhile, the match Kenya versus Nigeria will have a security officer from Uefa. Dutchman Van Rhee Wilhelmus will be tasked with ensuring law and order is observed and all security measures are put in place during the match.

  • Havelange resigns as honorary FIFA president

    Havelange resigns as honorary FIFA president

    Former FIFA President Joao Havelange resigned as honorary president of soccer’s governing body in a World Cup bribery case that has tarnished the organisation’s image for more than a decade.

    FIFA ethics court judge Joachim Eckert said in a ruling published on Tuesday by FIFA that the 96-year-old Brazilian resigned on April 18. The resignation had not been made public until now.

    Eckert cleared current FIFA President Sepp Blatter of wrongdoing in the case, which involved millions of dollars in kickbacks from World Cup contracts marketed by the ISL agency which collapsed into bankruptcy in 2001.

    Blatter said he received the verdict on his own role ”with satisfaction.”

    However, he acknowledged that the 12-year-old case, which has clouded much of his presidency, had done ”untold damage to the reputation” of FIFA.

    Havelange, who led FIFA from 1974-98, and his former son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira were guilty of ”morally and ethically reproachable conduct,” Eckert wrote.

    The German judge noted that it was not a crime in Switzerland at the time for Havelange, Teixeira and then-South American football confederation president Nicolas Leoz to accept bribes between 1992 and May 2000.

    “However, it is clear that Havelange and Teixeira, as football officials, should not have accepted any bribe money, and should have had to pay it back since the money was in connection with the exploitation of media rights,” the judgment said.

    Eckert said their conduct pre-dated FIFA’s current ethics code, which came into force last year – after Teixeira resigned from football, including as head of the Brazilian organising committee for the 2014 World Cup and as a FIFA board member.

    Leoz also resigned last week, citing health reasons, days after Havelange also secretly walked away.

    “Any further steps or suggestions are superfluous,” Eckert concluded. “No further proceedings related to the ISL matter are warranted against any other football official.”

    Eckert based his judgments on a 4,000-page investigation report submitted by FIFA ethics prosecutor Michael J. Garcia.

    Havelange and Teixeira were previously formally identified last July for taking bribes, when Switzerland’s Supreme Court ruled that a Swiss criminal prosecutor’s report on the case should be made public.

    FIFA, Havelange and Teixeira had tried to suppress it.

    Havelange also resigned in 2011 as a member of the International OIympic Committee, to avoid sanctions stemming from his role in the ISL case.

    ISL was created in the 1970s and helped fuel the boom in sports marketing, while also working closely with the IOC.

    Swiss prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand wrote in a case dossier that the agency funneled money through Liechtenstein to pay commissions to officials ”favored in order to promote sports policies and economic goals.”

    Six former ISL executives stood trial in 2008 and were cleared of charges relating to fraud.

    In court evidence, Leoz was identified as having received two ISL payments totaling $130,000 in 2000. The BBC later reported that he received further payments of at least $600,000.

    Payments attributed to accounts connected to Havelange and Teixeira totaled almost $22 million from 1992-2000

  • FIFA UNDER-17 WORLD  EX-GFA BOSS ASKS FIFA TO BAN  NIGERIA FOR AGE-CHEATING

    FIFA UNDER-17 WORLD EX-GFA BOSS ASKS FIFA TO BAN NIGERIA FOR AGE-CHEATING

    EX-GHANA FA chief Ben Koufie will make a recommendation to FIFA to ban Nigeria and Ivory Coast from playing at the U17 World Cup because they age-cheated their way to qualify for the competition.

    Koufie says he will make a recommendation to the world football’s governing body to ban countries from age-group competitions if any of their players fail age tests.

    Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) scans have been used by both FIFA and the Confederation of African Football to check on the true ages of players as the clampdown on age cheats intensifies.

    Nine players were banned from the African U-17 event after failing tests. The players hailed from Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Congo.

    Now Nigeria and Ivory Coast have qualified for the World Cup to be held in the UAE later this year and both teams played in Saturday’s final in Morocco.

    Koufie, who has worked with the technical committees of both CAF and FIFA, now wants FIFA to enforce tougher punishments for teams whose players fail MRI scans.

    “I am going to make some recommendations to Fifa that it should just not be a matter of disqualifying players from tournaments when they have failed their MRI in a specific competition,” Koufie told BBC Sport.

    “If the players played in the qualifying matches for that competition, that team must be disqualified because it used disqualified players in the qualifying process.

    “Once you are caught and it is proven that the player played in the qualifying matches then you have to be disqualified.

    “I am worried about it because it is not fair at all to the youngsters. It is called U-17 because it is a development stage.

    “If you now bring 20 to 25-year-olds to play in that competition then it is an injustice.”

    Koufie has been a consistent and strong critic of age cheating in Ghana and reckons the problem lies with coaches and administrators as part of what he says is an unhelpful emphasis on winning at a young age.

    The former Black Stars boss, who has also worked in Zimbabwe and Botswana, has been talking to youth coaches in Ghana and wants them to be at the forefront of addressing age cheating by emphasising development rather than winning for youth teams.

    “Coaching at this level must be taken seriously because that is the formative stage. The U-17 is not a must-win area,” he said.

    “It should be a chance for the boys to learn at a competitive level, that is the assessment. We are incorrectly using it now as a real competition where they must win.

    “Sometimes in football you lose in order to learn and in the process learn to win. They may lose but they must learn from their losses.”

    All four teams – champions Ivory Coast, runners-up Nigeria, Tunisia and Morocco – have qualified for the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in United Arab Emirates from 17 October to 8 November.

     

  • Jack Warner quits T&T post amid fraud inquiry

    A former top figure in international football, Jack Warner, has resigned as Trinidad and Tobago’s minister of security amid an inquiry into fraud.

    Investigators at the Caribbean, North and Central American international football body, CONCACAF, accused Mr. Warner of embezzlement.

    He stepped down as CONCACAF’s president in 2011.

    BBC says Mr. Warner, a former vice-president of the international football federation, FIFA, denied any wrongdoing.

    But he has been under pressure at home since the investigation’s findings were revealed on Friday.

    Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said in a short statement on Sunday that Mr. Warner had offered to resign from her cabinet and she had accepted his decision.

    “I wish to thank Mr. Warner for his service to the government and people of Trinidad and Tobago,” she said.

    A CONCACAF ethics panel accused Mr. Warner and former secretary general Chuck Blazer of enriching themselves through fraud during their time with the football body.

    They are accused of failing to disclose that a $25.9m (£17m) centre of excellence was built on Mr. Warner’s land and that Mr. Blazer received $20m from CONCACAF.

    Neither Mr. Warner nor Mr. Blazer co-operated with the investigation, which was based on documents and 38 interviews, and Mr. Blazer has also denied any wrongdoing.

     

  • FIFA opens bidding process for five competitions in 2016 and 2017

    FIFA opens bidding process for five competitions in 2016 and 2017

    The Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) on Wednesday opened the bidding process for five competitions in 2016 and 2017 to its 209 member associations.

    In a statement on the federation’s website, invited the member associations to submit a declaration of interest latest by May 15.

    According to the statement, the competitions to bid for include the FIFA U-20 and U-17 Women’s World Cups in 2016 and the FIFA U-20 and U-17 World Cups in 2017.

    Also available for the biding is the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in 2017.

    It added that the deadline was to enable it to provide the complete Bid Book by Nov. 15, for the final host decision to be taken at the FIFA Executive Committee meeting in December.

    “The bidding timeline for these competitions requires the member associations that wish to host these events to submit a declaration of interest by May 15.

    “The deadline to provide the hosting agreement with the complete Bid Book is Nov. 15, for the final decision on the hosts.

    “The decision will be taken at the FIFA Executive Committee meeting to be held in December.

    The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the last U-17 Women’s World Cup was hosted by Azerbaijan, while the U-20 competition was hosted by Japan.

    United Arab Emirates will host the 2013 edition of the U-17 Men’s World Cup in October, while Turkey will host the 2013 edition of the U-20 Men’s World Cup in June.

    The 2013 edition of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup will hold in Tahiti in September.