The German sport and development agency streetfootballworld has relaunched its website, www.streetfootballworld.org. The website has been redesigned to make it easier for journalists and stakeholders to gain an overview of the streetfootballworld network, as well as to provide a platform for individual network members to tell the world directly about their development work.

The new TV deal with Rupert Murdoch’s satellite television company BSkyB means that the 20 clubs in the English Premier League pocket £40 million each every season yet outside of the top flight the future has never looked worse.

A taped conversation implies that FIFA and UEFA Vice President and President of the Royal Spanish Football Association (RFEF) Àngel María Villar, was aware of match fixing in Spanish Primera División.

Greedy agents, bungling with contracts, allegations of kidnapping and threats of life: all ingredients in a drama from real life, in the middle of which stands the now 21 year old Nigerian football player John Obi Mikel. He is the main character in one of the most intricate cases of transfer of players in International football history, and his travel from Nigeria to Chelsea is described in a new book, Den Forsvunne Diamanten (“The lost Diamond”) by Norwegian Journalists Lars Backe Madsen and Jens M. Johansson.

Critical sports journalists should choose their words carefully when blogging about sports officials. In Germany, freelance journalist and former sports editor of the Berliner Zeitung, Jens Weinreich, has become the target of an aggressive campaign by the German Football Federation (DFB) after he described DFB president Theo Zwanziger as an “incredible demagogue” in a posting on a German sports blog.

Yesterday an independent election committee elected the new chairman of the Polish Football Association PZPN. The election followed a turbulent month of battles between FIFA, UEFA and the Polish government, threats of disqualification and corruption charges in the Polish world of football.

Long held suspicions of match-fixing in Bulgarian football materialised in the arrest of Bulgarian Ivan Lekov, vice chairman of the State Agency for Sport and Youth and member of the Executive Commission of the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU). This happened after a group of former referees went public about experienced bribes and match-fixings conducted by top positioned deputies in the BFU.

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) is backing a formal complaint to UEFA against the Romanian Football Federation (FRF) and its president Mircea Sandu, after the football federation allegedly encouraged footballers to throw stones at journalists and verbally abuse them.