Iran did not do very well at the recent World Cup in football, so Iran’s government promptly decided to fire the football federation’s president and the entire board and install another president. Now FIFA has responded by banning Iran from international competitions.

About a month after having posted a joint and quite strongly worded letter to European Commissioner Jan Figel, the tone from FIFA and the IOC seems to soften a bit.

Knowledge bank: Match fixing is emerging everywhere football is played and can no longer be termed one-offs. More often than not match fixing occurs in less prominent leagues and lower divisions and the bets are set on teams to lose.

Knowledge bank: The online sports betting business has an annual turnover of $80 billion and it is increasingly attractive to try and influence outcome of games. At the 2006 World Cup in Germany, FIFA set up a special early warning system to catch suspicious bets. FIFA and UEFA have also set up alert systems with other lotteries and gambling companies.

Yet another battle has broken out between UEFA and FIFA and this time FIFA is backed by IOC, spearheaded by Jacques Rogge. IOC and FIFA are unhappy that EU wants to get involved in the affairs of elite sport. UEFA on the other hand calls for stronger co-operation with the EU.

FIFA vice president Jack Warner is at the centre of a new scandal, as players for Trinidad and Tobago’s national football team, the Soca Warriors, have announced their decision to retire from international football. Team members accuse the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (T&TFF) of reneging on the contractual obligations it made to the team before the World Cup.

Nicolás Leoz, a FIFA executive member and president of the South American football confederation Conmebol, has been accused by Swiss magistrates of receiving bribes in the amount of almost 212.000 Swiss francs. The claim comes in a Swiss investigating magistrate’s report relating to the collapse of the sports marketing company ISL/ISMM.

FIFA vice president Jack Warner is expected to drop his threat of legal action against the authors of an auditing report and some FIFA officials, reports The Daily Telegraph. But when the story of Warner’s alleged illegal sale of 4,500 World Cup tickets broke earlier this month, he was all set to sue and claimed he had been the victim of a set-up.