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Pushing ahead with professional referees
At a meeting chaired by President
Joseph S. Blatter in Leipzig on 7
December 2005, the FIFA Executive
Committee resolved to press ahead
with professional refereeing and noted
that a working group of the Referees
Committee had started work on this
project. Furthermore, the committee
approved the new regulations
regarding nominations for the FIFA
List of International Referees, Assistant
Referees and Futsal Referees and noted
that the 2006 edition would comprise
884 match offi cials. The allocations per
confederation are as follows: AFC 191,
CAF 233, CONCACAF 93, CONMEBOL
74, OFC 25 and UEFA 268.
President Blatter also reported on the
Task Force For the Good of the Game,
which the Ordinary FIFA Congress in
Marrakech (Morocco) had approved on
12 September 2005.
The Executive Committee also
discussed the following points:
- Proposals will be made to the 2006
FIFA Congress for modifi cations to the
provision regarding age in the Men’s
Olympic Football Tournament. Hitherto,
three players over the age of 23 have
been able to compete. This rule will be
Groundbreaking decision
FIFA Calendar February to June 2006
3 February Asuncion
South American Football Confederation
(CONMEBOL) congress
14 February Zurich
Meeting of the Organising Committee for the
Olympic Football Tournaments
15 February Zurich
Meetings of the Players’ Status Committee and the
Legal Committee
16 February Zurich
Meeting of the Committee for FIFA Women’s
Youth Competitions
17 February Zurich
Meetings of the Organising Committee for
the FIFA Club World Championship and the
Associations Committee
3-4 March Lucerne
120th Annual General Meeting of the International
Football Association Board (IFAB)
3-4 March Dusseldorf
2nd International Football and Sports Medicine
Conference
5 March Dusseldorf
Meetings of F-MARC, the Sports Medical
Committee and the confederations’ medical
committees
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On 8 December, the Hamburg district
court pronounced a judgment
confi rming the protection of FIFA
trademarks. The court decided
that FIFA was entitled to forbid the
Ferrero company from using the mark
“Deutschland 2006” on its products.
In reaching its decision, the court
referred to FIFA’s German and European
registered marks. This pronouncement
of trademark protection in FIFA’s favour
reaffi rmed yet again that no other
company may make commercial use of
these marks. The judgment was passed
in temporary injunction proceedings
Follow all the action of all
matches and extensive
editorial coverage on
abolished for the 2008 Olympic Football
Tournament. The IOC’s recent decision
to admit twelve teams (hitherto ten)
to the women’s competition was also
welcomed.
- The proposal was approved for
the number of teams in the new U-17
women’s competition starting in 2008
to be increased from 12 to 16.
- The organisation of the FIFA Futsal
World Championship in 2008 was
awarded to Brazil.
- The dates for the next African Cup of
Nations in Egypt from 20 January to 10
February 2006 were offi cially approved
in accordance with the international
match calendar.
- The FIFA Emergency Committee’s
decision on 1 November 2005 to
award the USA television rights for
the 2007-2014 period to ABC/ESPN
and Univision for USD 425 million was
ratifi ed.
- Furthermore, the executive agreed
that the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking
should be revised. The new system will
come into effect after the 2006 FIFA
World Cup and will include data from
the previous four instead of eight years
for evaluation purposes.
that FIFA had initiated against Ferrero
in a move to protect its exclusive rights
towards its own contractual partners.
Despite the fact that Ferrero had
expected such a petition from FIFA and
had therefore deposited a so-called
letter of protection with the court
outlining its legal interpretation, the
Hamburg district court ruled in favour
of FIFA. In previous proceedings, the
Hamburg district court had decided
that Ferrero’s attempts to register
“Deutschland 2006” as a mark were
unfairly obstructing FIFA’s commercial
activities.
FIFAworldcup.com
On the question of member
associations, the executive body passed
the following decisions:
- to ratify the Emergency Committee’s
provisional revocation of the Yemen
Football Association’s suspension;
- to grant the Kenya Football
Federation another deadline of two
months in which to bring its structure
into line with the FIFA Statutes, or else
be suspended;
- to suspend the Algeria football
association as from 23 December 2005
unless the elections planned for 22
December are carried out in accordance
with the association’s applicable
statutes;
- to suspend payments from the
Financial Assistance Programme
(FAP) to the Football Association of
Brunei Darussalam for as long as the
association fails to submit its statutes to
FIFA. These statutes should have been
received by 15 April 2004.
Finally, FIFA General Secretary Urs
Linsi informed the Executive Committee
that Michael Schallhart, the Director of
the Executive Offi ce of the President,
had been appointed Deputy General
Secretary.
New languages
FIFAworldcup.com is produced, designed,
hosted and marketed jointly
by FIFA and Yahoo! The offi cial site
has fi ve main sections: Tournament,
Classic Football, Fun and Games, Organisation
and Destination Germany,
each of which contains breaking news,
real-time results, photo galleries and
archived video highlights from the
vaults of FIFA. FIFAworldcup.com now
has three additional languages – Portuguese,
Italian and Korean – to take the
total number of languages to seven.
“FIFA is very pleased to announce the
expansion of FIFAworldcup.com with
new languages and new features for
soccer fans worldwide,” said Jérôme
Valcke, director of the FIFA Marketing
& TV division.
6-8 March Dusseldorf
2006 FIFA World Cup Germany team workshop
9 March Zurich
Internal Audit Committee meeting
13 March Zurich
Meetings of the Technical and Development
Committee and the Football Committee
14 March Zurich
Meetings of the Board of FIFA Marketing & TV AG,
the Marketing and Television Advisory Board and
the Strategic Studies Committee
15 March Zurich
Meetings of the Finance Committee, the Goal
Bureau and the Tsunami Task Force
16 March Zurich
Meetings of the Bureau of the 2006 FIFA World
Cup Germany and the Executive Committee (1st part)
17 March Zurich
Executive Committee meeting (2nd part)
22-25 March Frankfurt
2006 FIFA World Cup Germany referees’
workshop
23 March Budapest
European Football Confederation (UEFA) congress
31 March Zurich
Referees Committee meeting
11 April Zurich
FIFA fi nancial media conference
24-25 May Zurich
Blue Stars/FIFA Youth Cup
2 June Munich
Meetings of the Internal Audit Committee and the
Board of FIFA Marketing & TV AG
3 June Munich
Meetings of the Finance Committee, the
Organising Committee for the 2006 FIFA World
Cup and the Strategic Studies Committee
4 June Munich
Executive Committee meeting
5 June Munich
Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and
Confederation of North, Central American and
Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF)
6 June Munich
FIFA Congress
7 June Berlin
FIFA World Cup Gala
9 June-9 July
2006 FIFA World Cup Germany
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