A match delayed by missile attack warnings is not what Cristiano Ronaldo and co signed up for but it’s the new reality; the Saudi sporting juggernaut is stalling

Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed the scarf in the colours of the Saudi Arabian flag and waved it at the sparse but enthusiastic crowd, who responded with rapturous cheers. It was a gesture of defiance rather than a victory salute, encapsulating the Saudi equivalent of “Keep calm and carry on”.

Monday night’s Asian Champions League Elite game between Al-Nassr and the Uzbek side Neftchi Fergana had ended with a 3-1 win for the Saudi club coached by Ange Postecoglou, with Ronaldo, supported by Sadio Mané, scoring, the smattering of star names indicative of the lure of the Saudi Pro League. Yet this isn’t quite how Ronaldo and co would have anticipated life in Riyadh. The meagre attendance aside, Monday’s game was delayed by a threat of missile attacks from Yemen’s Houthi rebels. A safety warning issued 15 minutes before kick-off came two days after 13 people died and more than 300 were wounded by Houthi strikes on Riyadh’s King Khalid international airport.

• Backlash greeted award of prize to US president

• Fifa committee to make recommendations this year

Donald Trump is likely to end up as the only political leader awarded the Fifa peace prize after Gianni Infantino was told at Thursday’s meeting of the Fifa council to make major changes or scrap the controversial award.

The Guardian has learned that several council members demanded the award be abolished and others called for the prize to be depoliticised, with Fifa’s football social responsibility committee to make a recommendation before the next council meeting in Doha on 16 December.

• Infantino failed to provide answers to questions

• European leaders expect someone will stand against him

European football leaders are increasingly confident they will find a candidate to stand against Gianni Infantino in next year’s Fifa presidential election, with the heads of the English and German football associations questioning his fitness to govern after a three-and-a-half-hour council meeting.

Infantino began the long-awaited gathering of Fifa’s 37-strong executive board by apologising for failing to consult them over his abandoned World Cup sell-off plan but failed to provide answers to dozens of questions posed by the European FAs on a range of subjects including the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal, Donald Trump’s Fifa peace prize and the Folarin Balogun affair, when the USA striker’s World Cup suspension was overturned after lobbying from the US president.

• World Cup sell-off, Balogun and peace prize on agenda

• Opponents will press home need for independent review

Gianni Infantino will be questioned by Fifa council members over his involvement in the aborted World Cup sell-off plan, the Folarin Balogun affair and the decision to award Donald Trump the inaugural Fifa peace prize at what is expected to be a heated meeting at the world governing body’s headquarters on Thursday.

The Fifa president rejected repeated calls for an extraordinary general meeting of council in the summer after the emergence of the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposals, but will meet his critics for the first time since then in Zurich, with one attender predicting that the talks could be “explosive”.

• Rivals lining up to position as potential replacements

• Afcon tournament expected to return to biennial cycle

Patrice Motsepe’s leadership of the Confederation of African Football (Caf) is under growing pressure, with officials from across the continent warning they have lost trust in the president and rivals including Samuel Eto’o positioning themselves potentially to replace him.

A return to a biennial Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) cycle is expected to be confirmed at Caf’s executive committee meeting in Abidjan next month after Motsepe surprisingly announced the U-turn last week – 10 months after the decision was taken to hold it every four years. That move is said to have wide support within Africa, but several sources have said there has been a weakening of trust in Caf’s leadership, with some questioning Motsepe’s management.

• Kogan says he has faced ‘absolutely no political pressure’

• Regulator wants deal on redistribution through leagues

The chair of the Independent ­Football Regulator (IFR), David Kogan, has said he will resign if he faces any political pressure on how to respond to Manchester City being found guilty of breaching Premier League financial rules over a nine-year period, insisting “my independence is absolute”.

Kogan could remove City’s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) should the damning verdict of an independent commission be upheld at the end of an ongoing appeal process. ­Concern had been raised, however, that the proximity of City’s ­ownership to Abu Dhabi’s rulers could trigger a political intervention by the UK ­government and an immediate test of the new regulator’s powers.

• Manager claims City fans suffering more than players

• Luis Enrique says club should keep all titles won

Enzo Maresca has admitted he would describe Manchester City as “cheats” if he were a Manchester United or Arsenal fan. The manager’s ­comments came as he suggested it had been harder for City’s supporters to deal with the scandal surrounding the club than it had been for him or the players.

Maresca guided City to an ­impressive 3-0 win at Liverpool on Sunday in their first game since the club were found guilty of more than 100 charges related to breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules. He was asked whether the performance was down to the team being brought closer together by the guilty verdict.

Gulf-owned clubs have faced Uefa scrutiny – their different approaches since have left one at the top table and one raging against the machine

Nasser al-Khelaifi was among those unhappy with the timing of the release of Manchester City’s guilty verdict by the Premier League a fortnight ago, although his visit with Paris Saint-Germain to the Etihad Stadium for a Champions League game on Wednesday provides a timely reminder that it could have been far worse.

The two clubs are linked by more than their ownership by Gulf states, being among the first found to have broken Uefa’s financial fair play rules in 2014, and by a magnitude that would make subsequent offenders pale in comparison.

• Report published on Tuesday before consultation period

• It will have recommendations to improve sustainability

The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) is to recommend clubs introduce greater cost controls in its long-awaited State of the Game report, to be published on Tuesday.

The 250-page draft report, with a final version to follow in the spring after an eight-week public consultation beginning this week, will paint a damning picture of the financial state of English men’s football, including the stark finding that 94% of the top 116 clubs are loss-making.

Football felt secondary on the first weekend of action since club were found guilty of breaking financial rules

The Cimbri are heading menacingly south, but in Rome life goes on. The asteroid is definitely coming this way, but people go to work, eat, drink, plan as usual. The White Walkers are approaching the Wall, but the squabbles between the great houses go on. Everyone in the Premier League knows the crisis is approaching, thinks – hopes, fears? – it may be apocalyptic, but until it arrives, what can you do but carry on?

After any break, there’s always an awkward moment while everybody resets. What was the cliffhanger we left the soap opera on? What new plotline had just been seeded? This is one of the reasons international weeks are so disruptive. It’s not just that the Premier League story slows for a while, it’s that we are reminded that these entities are not eternal but alliances of convenience between paid employees who have a life outside the soap opera.

• Workload, injuries and finances underpin concerns

• Most European FAs want return to previous format

Europe’s football associations have raised serious concerns about the impact of the extended international break and will ask Uefa to push for a reversion to the previous scheduling.

The new three-week break left European countries tasked with four Nations League games, which typically took place within 11 days. It has brought deep misgivings about player workload, injuries and financial viability, with one FA president telling the Guardian it was “a disaster” and numerous others saying the schedule is unworkable.

• Confederation president clarifies his intentions to staff

• Canadian was eyed as potential rival to Gianni Infantino

Victor Montagliani has told Concacaf staff he intends to stand for re-election as the confederation’s presidentnext year, which will rule him out of going up against Gianni Infantino for the top job at Fifa.

The Canadian businessman is understood to have relayed the message to most of the 41 members of Concacaf, the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation.

Manchester City’s chair is key to the project of making Abu Dhabi a secure world power but his next move may be the sale of the club

No one better understands the precarious tightrope Abu Dhabi walks when it tries to balance its relationships with western Europe while weighing the complex geopolitics of the Gulf region than Manchester City’s chair, Khaldoon al-Mubarak. He was eight when his father, ambassador Khalifa Ahmed Abdel Aziz al-Mubarak, left the family’s Paris apartment for work on 9 February 1984, and was assassinated on the street by a Palestinian terrorist.

And no one outside the emirate’s royal family could be more wrapped up in the project of making and maintaining Abu Dhabi as a significant and secure world power and the dominant member of the United Arab Emirates, a nation state still only 55 years old. His paternal grandfather, Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz al-Mubarak, was chair of Abu Dhabi’s Sharia judicial department and senior adviser to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the founding president of the UAE. As such, Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz was the James Madison of the UAE (the founding father, not the Spurs player) in that he crafted the Islamic legal framework of the new nation in the 1970s.

Verdict has been a long time coming and the Southampton head coach has recaptured hearts and minds at St Mary’s

“Hi Tonda, are you a cheat?” That simple, succinct, question cut to the heart of a matter that has vexed the Football Association all summer. It was posed by the Northern Echo’s Dominic Shaw after Southampton overcame Middlesbrough in the second leg of May’s Championship playoff semi‑final and proved the cue for Tonda Eckert to walk out of his press conference at St Mary’s.

Although Southampton’s manager subsequently admitted to authorising spying on opponents, England’s football authorities struggled to decide what punishment best fitted an act some regard as heinous but which others fail to take seriously. Now, in autumn, we finally have an FA verdict, with Eckert given a six-week ban suspended until the end of the 2027-28 season, a £28,000 fine and a reprimand.

• Nigeria filed complaint over ineligible players in playoff

• Fifa investigators aware of situation before tournament

Fifa allowed the Democratic Republic of the Congo to compete at this summer’s World Cup despite reports suggesting an internal investigation found that the country had fielded an ineligible player in qualifying.

The player in question, the goalkeeper Lionel Mpasi, starred for his nation at the tournament, including against England in the last 32. Mpasi, who was born in France and played for Les Bleus at youth level, had never completed the process of switching nationalities, Fifa reportedly found. No punishment was levied against the Congolese federation, Fecofa.