Features

Zico’s older brother Nando was also a talented footballer. He was tortured by the military regime in Brazil and gave up his own career so his younger brother could flourish.

Der Spiegel and other newspapers hail him as an important whistleblower, but five years ago Rui Pinto obtained 268,000 euro from two bank accounts in the Cayman Islands through hacking. Then he turned to football.

Last week the Russian Premier League club Yenisey Krasnoyarsk signed the midfielder Babacar Sarr. On Thursday he is to stand trial in Norway, accused of rape. But will Sarr appear in court?

The US capital is hosting an anti-Qatar conference this week. The programme is secret and it’s an invitation-only event. The organisers – the Middle East Forum – say that it’s not open to the public, citing security reasons. And lurking in the shadows is Jaimie Fuller, co-founder of New Fifa Now.

Is the UEFA president unduly interfering in the Icelandic elections? Aleksander Čeferin gives vocal support to candidate Guðni Bergsson to Icelandic media while insinuating that Iceland will struggle within UEFA if Bergsson’s opponent is elected.

Former Bahrain international Haakem al-Araibi is trapped in a detention cell in Bangkok, wanted back in is home country on trumped-up charges. Neither FIFA president Gianni Infantino or his vice president Sheikh Salman from Bahrain, who al-Araibi has said is complicit in his plight, have spoken out in defence of him.

If anything, the human rights situation in the UAE is even worse than in Qatar. 

Jim Solbakken has become Norway’s most influential football agent through his close friendship with Ole Gunnar Solskjær. And he prefers to sit at every side of the table.

When Josimar first started composing an annual list of the top 50 players in the world back in 2011, one of the driving ideas behind the concept was a strong antipathy towards lists.

In 2015 businessman Edwin Oviedo took over as the president of the Peruvian football federation after his predecessor Manuel Burga had been arrested in Zurich over FIFAGate. Now Oviedo is arrested and facing charges as the head of a mafia organization with blood on their hands.