Roma retained its place atop Italy's Serie A with a convincing 3-1 win at Udinese on Wednesday, putting further pressure on the title holder Juventus, 11 points behind after yet another loss. But Roma and the teams chasing it for the league lead seem to want nothing to do with talk of the Scudetto.

At a funeral service in Liverpool on Thursday, the Everton community bade farewell to Howard Kendall, a longtime servant of the club as player and manager. Orlando City SC head coach Adrian Heath attended the memorial of a man whose tenure at the club elevated it to unprecedented heights in the 1980s.

You'd think the tone of the FIFA presidential election to find a successor for Sepp Blatter would be all about making a break from the past, but the first few days of the campaign suggest it's anything but. To the contrary, it appears to be business as usual with charges of dirty tricks and threats of reprisals and silence all around.

If Sunil Gulati was Michel Platini and Barack Obama was Nicolas Sarkozy, U.S. Soccer might be voting for Bahrain's Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa for FIFA president. But Gulati isn't Platini and Obama isn't Sarkozy, and Gulati won't be seeking out Obama's advice on who to vote for the next FIFA president.

On Monday, FIFA stopped accepting candidates to replace Sepp Blatter as the scandal-tainted governing body's president. The field stands at eight challengers, although it will likely be reduced to seven, as UEFA President Michel Platini, the former frontrunner for the job, is currently suspended after he and president Blatter (also suspended) entered into a $2 million "gentleman's agreement" for unspecified consulting work that took some nine years to be paid out.

On Thursday, Spanish sports daily El Mundo Deportivo opened a giant can of worms when it reported that an unnamed La Liga linesman had complained to police that he was being pressured into favoring Real Madrid in next month's Clasico versus Barcelona. Though the game officials for the Nov 21 encounter have not been confirmed yet, the linesman in question says that he was pressured first by the head referee (also unnamed in the report) in consideration to take charge of the match and second by Jose Angel Jimenez Munoz de Morales, a member of Spain's referee committee, after declining …

Angered by the costs to attend a Champions League match against Arsenal at the Emirates, some Bayern Munich fans stayed in the concourse and didn't take their seats until five minutes after kickoff. English supporters groups applauded the gesture as it sharpened the focus on just how much some EPL fans are being expected to pay for tickets.

France will play the opener of Euro 2016 at the Stade De France 234 days from now. The host nation's opponent has yet to be determined, so what better time to tell you exactly how the world's second most watched soccer tournament will play out?

Nothing is ever what it seems with FIFA. On the day its executive committee met for the first time without suspended president Sepp Blatter, to discuss wide-ranging reform proposals, transparency was lacking. And calls to postpone the election for a new president were rebuffed, but it is anything but clear who has the support -- and clean hands -- to win the election.

For the first time since the formal suspension of two of its highest-ranking members, FIFA's Executive Committee (ExCo) will meet in Zurich on Tuesday. According to PA Sport, the hastily organized "emergency meeting" will cover a number of items, including possibly postponing FIFA's Feb 26 presidential election. With current president Sepp Blatter and former candidate and frontrunner Michel Platini both suspended from the organization, and Chung Moon-joon, another candidate, recently banned from the game for six years, soccer's governing body is in meltdown mode, and possibly, unable to govern itself.

The FIFA scandal really is the gift that keeps on giving-so much so, that perhaps we should refer to it as "The FIFA Unraveling", because with each passing day, it's looking more and more likely that 1) we've probably only just scratched the surface of the corruption inside this organization, and 2) FIFA really is unraveling. Indeed, Friday saw the birth of the newest sub-scandal living inside the larger scandal category we'll refer to henceforth as the World Cup "votes-for-bribes" program organized and underwritten by FIFA's executive committee.

Failure to win a Premier League title or a Champions League crown in more than a decade has rankled Arsenal supporters, and the mood has soured further with the news that once again the club will pay3 million pounds ($4.65 million) to Kroenke Sports Entertainment for unspecified services.

For the first time in its history, Belgium will be the No. 1 ranked team in the world when FIFA's rankings are released in early November. So what expectations should be placed on this country of 11 million people for Euro 2016, a nation that has played soccer for over 110 years without winning a major title?

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are fighting the 90-day suspensions handed down by FIFA's ethics committee for a $2 million payment Platini received from FIFA in 2011 for work he said he did many years earlier. The case against them, sources told the Associated Press, hinges on the suspicious nature of the transactions: neither could present a written contract justifying the payment.

Bayern Munich has been the most dominant team in Europe thus far even though Franck Ribery has yet to play a game, and the German giant has played even better over the last month without the services of Arjen Robben.