The corruption scandals hit FIFA is dragging back the hosts for the World Cup next year. Russia is reportedly facing financial challenges as sponsors avoid the whole situation.

The top football regulatory body lost £300million in 2016 and could lose another £400million in 2017. The mountain of allegations upon allegations is scaring off investors and sponsors. The activities of Russia in Ukraine and Syria are not helping matters as well as tension continues to grow between Moscow and other nations.

The Swiss police are carrying out investigations if Russia officials bribed its FIFA counterparts in a bid to distort the World cup bidding process in their favour. They are making the investigations with the help of the United States and France.
Since the scandals came to light in 2015, FIFA have had just one sponsor Alfa Bank based in Moscow. On the international level, just China’s Wanda Group is supporting it next year. Other top firms that could have joined in are reportedly put off by the investigations of the FBI into the bribery allegations.

So far, Seep Blatter and Michel Platini have been banned from football but over 40 other officials are awaiting trial for various offences. Over 20 corporate entities were supporting the body but most have backed out as the brand became toxic.

The financial issues would be thrashed out Soccer Venues when the members meet for the annual congress in Bahrain. The Sponsorship and broadcasting rights weigh in heavily on the total costs spent on World Cup tournaments. Sponsors are uncomfortable about Russia, and the tensions in that region with the North Korea/South Korea issues make it worse. Less than thirty percent of required sponsors are on board as Russia face a race against time for the World Cup 2018.

Real Madrid forward Gareth Bale is expected to feature for his national team side Wales when they play Ireland on March 24 after he recovered from his long-term ankle injury.

The former Tottenham Hotspur player returned to action only last week for Madrid, scoring within 12 minutes of joining the team. Madrid defeated Espanyol 2-0 in the La Liga, but it was the 27-year old that netted the second of the match.

Wales assistant Osian Roberts says that the player is now looking forward to the Ireland game as there were fears he might return in time.

“He’s now confident he’ll be in the team and ready to fight for his place,” the coach said.

“He’s coming along very well, he’s in a good place both physically and mentally. He’s been working extremely hard. He was in a good mood, we watch him train and he looked very good physically and fresh of course,” Roberts added.

Roberts joined head coach Chris Coleman as the pair travelled to Madrid to check on their star player. He added that they expect that Bale would get more action under Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane ahead of the Ireland clash next month.

Bale picked up the injury in November last year but he has recovered six weeks earlier than initial estimates. Roberts attributed the pace of his recovery to hard work from the player, and not just nature.

“We see Gareth when he scores goals for Wales and Real Madrid and amazing things on the field but what most people do not see is the hard work he puts in behind closed doors, in private, that gives him a base so he can make the most of the special talent he has,” Roberts said.

The coach added that Bale is a “well-disciplined” player who readily sacrifices. He also said that the medical staff did their best for the player and assure theoretical long-term guarantees against any setbacks.

The European Club Association led by Karl-Heinz Rummenigge says world football governing council, FIFA should reconsider the plan to expand the current number of world cup participants from 32 to 48.

The Gianni Infantino-led council had in October announced plans to host a 48-nation tournament starting from 2026; a move whose legitimate fate is bid to be decided on January 10, next year.

In the proposed format, 16 groups constituted of three teams each will involve the top two teams advancing to a 32-side knockout round. However, the 220-club constituted ECA says the number of games played each season “has already reached an unacceptable level.”

“In the interest of the fans and the players, we urge FIFA not to increase the number of world cup participants,” pleaded the chairman in a letter addressed to FIFA.

In a move many see as commerce-focused and politically motivated, the Infantino-led council seems to have made up their minds to increase the number of invitees to the quadrennial summer party especially in the one slated to be hosted in North America come 2026.

This will see an additional 368 players and 16 teams joining the one month (tourney). Many pundits and critics claim to see right through Infantino’s “chess-moves” claiming that his re-election hopes rest mostly on the promises he made to FIFA’s 211 member federations – something an expanded and more lucrative 2018 World Cup will aid him in fulfilling.

The Italian initially promised to expand the number of World Cup slots to 40 and double development grants to $5 million to member nations from each World Cup.

Rummenigge, also Bayern Munich chairman, maintains that the interest of the beautiful game should be put first before any other form of satisfaction. According to him “politics and commerce” should not be exclusive priority in football

Armando Perez is the interim president of the Argentine Football Association (AFA) and he has faith that the Argentine national side has what it takes and will become the next world champions.

This is something extremely surprising and rather unbelievable to say for any national side as winning the World Cup is a task that only the best teams are capable of winning.

Argentina has recently been struggling as they lost against Ecuador on October 8 of 2015 and sustained successive draws after facing off with Paraguay as well as with Brazil. All of these matches were played last year on 2015 which was a fairly long time ago but even now in 2016, the Argentine national side continues to underperform and this is evident by one of their latest matches which saw them losing against Paraguay and only being able to draw against Peru.

Despite all of these recent underwhelming results that Argentina has experiencing, for some reason the head interim president of the Argentine Football Association (AFA) has stated that Argentina will become the next world champions as he said:

“We are going through a challenging phase, but we will overcome it and we will move forward thanks to deep commitment and outstanding dedication. We are very busy working in full transparency and we are taking great care to ensure the national team is not affected by the administrative problems we have at the institution.”

“Argentina will now need to work towards Russia 2018 in order to renew their challenge. Hence, we decided together to work with young Argentine football players, including Under-23 players, to see if we really have the chance to renovate the team and infuse fresh blood into the national selection, and this takes time. There is no doubt we will be the next world champions,”

The last time that Argentina was claimed as the best national side in the world was back in 1986 which were 30 years ago and Armando Perez is certain that they can do it once again despite their recent struggles.

Nigeria are considered as one of the top ranking teams in Africa and they would potentially be a favourite to achieve World Cup 2018 qualification with ease.

However, there is now a possibility that the Nigerian Football Federation will not be involved in the qualification campaign to start with. The country is in the midst of a recession due to extremely low oil prices. Nigerian economy depends a lot on the export of oil. Since the prices have been low for more than a year, the government has had to deal with severe recession and inability to support the manufacturing sector due to the lack of power.

In such a scenario, it has just been revealed that appearing in the World Cup 2018 qualification campaign will cost several millions of dollars when the players’ wages, travel costs, and other factors are considered. For example, it is estimated that the upcoming game against Zambia will alone cost the Nigerian Football Federation around $300,000 for various means.

Transport will be the biggest factor in this price estimate, as a chartered plane to transport the squad and the staff for two days will come close to $200,000. The Football Federation is also reportedly in debt to the tune of $95,000 to each player.

“As we speak, we don’t have any kobo (a denomination of Nigeria’s naira currency) in our purse. The charges for the Airline alone is $200,000 for a 140-seater plane, and it will be on ground with the team for two days. We need between $6,000 and $10,000 for flight ticket(s) to bring in the players (from Europe). The federal government still has to play its part, because this is the beginning of our campaign for the 2018 World Cup qualifying ticket. If we must get it right, every hand must be on deck,” said a member of the Football Federation.

The Nigerian national football team has recently experienced a change within their staff members as Gernot Rohr was appointed as the new Technical Advisor of the national squad and the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has given the new staff member the target of at least qualifying for the upcoming 2018 World Cup.

When it comes to qualifying for the World Cup, the Nigerian national side used to struggle as they failed to do it from 1970-1990 but starting from the World Cup of 1994, they have consistently managed to do it except for the World Cup of 2006.

AdemolaOlajire is the Assistant Director of Communications from the Nigerian Federation and and he has announced to the media what their plans are and the recent details concerning the recent changes of the Nigerian Federation.

“The only reason we have not signed a coach before now is because the previous person didn’t want to be given target but the present administration is very much concerned about qualification for the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals’’

“That is the target that has been given to Mr Rohr and he is very comfortable with it.He believes that Nigeria has the players to not only qualify for the competition but do very well in Russia’’

“MrGernot Rohr is very ready and willing to reside here in Nigeria and for your information, Rohr has an African wife, a Madagascan..Work has started already because Mr Rohr is on his way to Spain as we speak to watch the NPFL stars in the Trofeo Carranza tournament’’ AdemolaOlajire said.

In order for the Nigerian national side to qualify for the approaching 2018 World Cup, they will have to finish at the top spot of group B and gain more points than: Cameroon, Algeria and Zambia as all of those national sides are competing in the same group but only 1 will be able to snatch the top spot and qualify.

The elimination matches of the Euros are beginning from today and taking ground in the evening will be the two teams which have reached the second round in unexpected manners.

Talking about Portugal, they probably had one of the less tricky groups in the tournament, if not the least tricky and thus, top 2 was a definite possibility,
Iceland and Austria were considered to be the easy preys and Hungary should not have been much of a challenge either.

But, they are coming to the knockouts without having had a taste of victory as every team managed to hold their striking prowess.

In fact, they must be thankful that they are even in the knockouts. It’s only on goal differential that they came third in the list of the teams which achieved the third rankings in various groups.

The journey could have been over if they had been left behind to 5th or 6th in that list.

The mastery of Cristiano, which made the 3-3 result possible from nowhere on Wednesday, would not do it every time, not against a well-organized Croatia if the other 10 remain as patchy as they have been.

Regarding Croatia, they were tipped to advance anyway, but, to advance as group toppers and that too from a group which had the reigning champions Spain; it must be said that they have punched above their weight.

However, it is of little importance how many wins or how many points you come to the knockouts with. What matters is what you do here.

One would rather want to be wearing a Croatia jersey and not the Portugal one on late form, but, the history of the matches between these two teams gives the upper hand to the Portuguese.

Antonio Conte was selected as the successor of Jose Mourinho on April of 2016 as he will be one of the main figures in charge of pushing Chelsea back to the top spots of the Premier League.

Taking into consideration the recent drop of form that Chelsea suffered, trying to get them back into shape and spark life back into the team is not going to be an easy task to accomplish but according to Gianluigi Buffon, Conte is going to be able to make it happen.

“Conte is a big coach and I’m convinced he will be an excellent one at Chelsea. A Conte team is strong in defense and works constantly, day to day. Conte is a coach with a very simple idea. For the players he makes it very clear. He wants to play without risk in the defensive line and to exploit the opportunities to score goals when they come.’’ Gianluigi Buffon said as he voiced his confidence in the Italian manager Antonio Conte.

The managerial task of Conte in Chelsea will begin when the 2016 Euro’s reaches it’s end but right now Antonio Conte is focusing in pushing Italy as far as possible in the international tournament.

Italy is competing in Group E along with: Sweden, Belgium and Republic of Ireland and so far, the Italian side has snatched 2 victories from their opening 2 matches of the competition and have already qualified for the next rounds of the 2016 Euro’s.

Antonio Conte became a coveted manager back when he guided Juventus to 3 successive Serie A titles and it was because of this fairly impressive accomplishment that the head chiefs of Chelsea opted to offer him a managerial contract to the Italian and with the task to position the Premier League club back as one of Europe’s elite clubs.

Some bad news for Welsh football fans, as the FAW is looking into some suspicious betting and gambling patterns.

This comes after Port Talbot lost a game to Rhyl over the weekend at a staggering 5 to 0. Now, were they just playing terribly or is there some kind of influence on the inside that is making people play worse than they should be? Are there any kind of suspicious betting patterns going on here or was it just a loose ended game? This is what the Welsh FA chief is hoping to find out and confirm before taking any kind of action against anyone.

The official Football Association of Wales is going to be launching an investigation in light of recent claims that there’s some match fixing going on in the national league. This is an official report and while nothing has yet been reported as claims being made true or false, there will be a thorough investigation by multiple agencies according to the FAW.

So how exactly did Port Talbot lose to a team like Rhyl over the weekend, especially at a staggering score of 5 to 0 for Rhyl? This clearly could have been a bad game or some illegal betting and fixing was taking place. The board of Talbot has called for a meeting in the upcoming week so they can discuss the incident with their players and get to the bottom of the situation.

The FAW has however confirmed that it was true that some large betting did in fact take place during the game. What they’re trying to figure out now though is if that any of the players on either team were involved in the betting any if players are found to be involved, some appropriate action will be taken against any and all players who made bets.

Gianluigi Buffon’s professional career starter off with Parma when he joined the Italian club back in 1995 and from there on out he has cemented his place in the history-books of the sport as one of the best goalkeepers ever.

Throughout the playing career of Buffon, he has lifted just about every top piece of silverware that there is to win in Italian football including: Serie A, Serie B, Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana. He has been fairly successful with his national team at the international stage as he also secured the FIFA World Cup silverware back in 2006.

After having made over 600 appearances in combined total including his time in Juventus as well as with the Italian national football team, it seems like the playing career of Buffon is finally reaching it’s end as the veteran player announced his plan of hanging up his boots after the 2018 World Cup.

“Was the €54m Juve paid for me too much? No, in football what you pay for players is right. It made me feel proud and happy. And if they paid €54m for me it’s because I’m worth it. Am I the greatest goalkeeper ever? It’s not up to me to say. How long will I last? I want to play this season and then two more with Juve and retire after the 2018 World Cup. The current Juve of Allegri is one that possesses more character and personality than any other Juventus team I’ve played in.’’ Gianluigi Buffon said as he talked about his transfer fee when he joined Juventus and about his retirement – and possibly a hook up with yacht charter UK who know about his love of boats.

The last time that the Italian national football team won the World Cup was in 2006 but Antonio Conte will be aiming to lift it when the next one kicks off in 2018 and taking into consideration that it will be last big competition of Gianluigi Buffon, there is even more motivation to go for it.

Italy aren’t really considered to be one of the favorites of winning it, Spain, Netherlands and Germany are the nations that are expected to reach furthest and coming out on top but Italy does have a squad that is competitive which is being guided by a highly rated manager, Antonio Conte.