Here are some of last week’s top stories from around the global soccer industry…
U.S. women soccer champs demand equal wages, conditions (Reuters)
Five top players for the World Cup champion U.S. women’s soccer team have filed a federal wage discrimination complaint claiming they are paid less than male players even though they generate more income for the United States Soccer Federation.
The athletes, including star scorer Carli Lloyd and goalkeeper Hope Solo, claim some of them earn as little as 40 percent of what men’s team players make, lawyer Jeffrey Kessler said on Thursday.
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NASL inks BeIN Sports broadcast deal (Soccerex)
The North American Soccer League (NASL) has signed a media rights deal with the North American arm of BeIN Sports. The deal will see BeIN broadcast a minimum of 34 NASL matches across the US, Canada and Puerto Rico on it pay-TV platform, while all NASL games will be available online. According to a release announcing the deal, BeIN Sports now has a North American subscribership of over 45 million.
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Burnely Post Record £30.14m Profit (FC Business)
Burnley Football Club made a record £30.14m net profit during their Premier League season in the financial year ending June, 2015. The figure reverses a £7.6m pre-tax loss reported in the previous 12 months, earned during promotion to the top flight. The accounts also do not include the sale of Danny Ings to Liverpool, for which a compensation fee is yet to be determined.
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Ex-Honduran President Pleads Guilty to FIFA Corruption Charges (Bloomberg)
Rafael Callejas, a former president of Honduras, pleaded guilty to corruption charges related to allegations of long-running bribery schemes involving international soccer organizers.
Callejas entered his guilty plea to racketeeering and fraud in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. He admitted accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for using his influence in allocating television broadcast and marketing rights tied to his role as former president of the Honduran soccer federation.
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UK Anti-Doping to review failure to flag doctor accused of providing banned drugs (the guardian)
The anti-doping watchdog is to review its failure to warn officials about a British doctor who allegedly provided banned drugs to around 150 elite sportspeople, despite being alerted to the case two years ago.
UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) said it would launch an independent investigation after the culture secretary, John Whittingdale, ordered immediate action in the wake of allegations that Mark Bonar prescribed performance-enhancing drugs to Premier League footballers, England cricketers and Tour de France cyclists, among others.
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MLS Commissioner Don Garber to visit Sacramento Republic FC in April (Major League Soccer)
Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber and Deputy Commissioner Mark Abbott will visit Sacramento Republic FC on April 14 to discuss the club’s proposal for joining MLS as an expansion team, the league and club announced on Thursday.
Garber and Abbott will meet with Republic managing partner Kevin Nagle and tour the proposed site for a new soccer stadium in the city’s Railyards area.
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Senate Committee Gives Green Light On Tax Break For Minnesota United Stadium (CBS)
The Minnesota United cleared a major hurdle at the State Capitol on Thursday. The Senate Tax Committee gave the green light for a tax break on its new St. Paul soccer stadium.
Minnesota United’s owners say they’ll pay the cost of turning an empty St. Paul lot into a state-of-the-art, $150 million, 20,000 seat outdoor facility. And St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman says without a stadium, the lot would stay empty for another 20 years.
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Europa League finalists Dnipro rocked by Euro ban after breaking money rules (Inside World Football)
Last season’s beaten Europa League finalists Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk of Ukraine have been banned from European competition for one season by UEFA for breaching financial regulations.
UEFA confirmed that Inter Baku, from Azerbaijan, and Romania’s Targu Mures have also been given one-season bans. UEFA say the bans will apply to the next season in which the clubs qualify for European competition and would be in force for the next three campaigns.
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Leicester City – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (The Swiss Ramble)
The story of the season is undoubtedly Leicester City. The Foxes spent five months at the bottom of the Premier League last year before an amazing resurgence that included seven wins in their last nine games that took them to safety in a respectable 14th place. However, it is fair to say that nobody predicted that they would be leading the table with every chance of winning the title.
Their success is all the more extraordinary, given that they changed manager in the summer, bringing in Claudio Ranieri after Nigel Pearson was dismissed for a series of what might be loosely termed as “PR misdemeanours”. Although a popular figure, Ranieri’s appointment was widely ridiculed, despite his solid track record at clubs like Valencia and Chelsea, though it looks like the Italian will have the last laugh after a season that the club itself has described as “remarkable”.
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A Challenge to Soccer’s Version of Solitary Confinement (New York Times)
Sebino Plaku, a player for the Polish professional soccer team Slask Wroclaw, sat across a small desk from the club’s president and vice president.
It was Aug. 28, 2014. The two club officials, Mr. Plaku said, presented him with a document that was an “annex” to his contract with the team. The team, the executives told Mr. Plaku, wanted to immediately reduce his monthly salary by more than 50 percent. They told Mr. Plaku, an Albanian, that he had 20 minutes to decide whether to accept.
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This article originally appeared on Business of Soccer. To learn more about BOS you can follow them on Facebook or Twitter.
